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.

Jean is a ruthless, cold-hearted businessman but a passion for vengeance will eventually betray him.


Sunday, March 5, 1989
Canadian crime boss Jean Renault and his lover Nancy O'Reilly enter the room of Audrey Horne, a hostage at One Eyed Jack's. Audrey is the teenage daughter of the boss, caught snooping around by Nancy's sister Blackie and drugged up on heroin while the bordello's managers conspire to extract a large ransom from her wealthy father. Jean caresses Audrey and feeds her a caramel while introducing himself. Then he meets Emory Battis, a sniveling co-conspirator of Blackie. He and Blackie show Jean a videotape of FBI Agent Dale Cooper in a tuxedo talking to Jean's brother Jacques on the night of his death. "I want him," Jean demands, asserting that Cooper must deliver the ransom so that he can avenge his brothers' murders (youngest brother Bernie was also killed a few days after the agent arrived in town). A jealous Blackie demands that Jean send Nancy home, but he laughs her off. "Of course," he adds when their business has mostly been wrapped up, "we can't let the girl live now, can we?"

Monday, March 6, 1989
Jean waits for Ben Horne, owner of One Eyed Jack's, in the office at the Great Northern Hotel (which he also owns). Ben doesn't recognize Jean at first, until the gangster reminds him that he collects protection money ("insurance" he calls it) on Jack's. Ben is confused by Jean's visit until he's shown the videotape of Audrey bound and gagged. Jean warns that he is just the messenger, but that he has some demands of his own: a cash fee in addition to the ransom, a partnership in One Eyed Jack's, and the assignment of Cooper as the bagman. Back at One Eyed Jack's, Emory escorts Audrey in to see Jean. Still doped up on heroin, she is delirious and accusatory. When he learns Emory has been hitting her, Jean comforts Audrey, telling her she won't be harmed again. As Emory tries to talk his way out of trouble, Jean coldly shoots him in the chest, knocking him to the ground and killing him instantly. Jean then climbs onto the chair with a shuddering, sobbing Audrey and soothes her.

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Jean shows Blackie how he plans to kill Cooper: with a sliding knife hidden in his sleeve. He tells her that Audrey will slip away peacefully in the throes of an overdose. She's uncertain that Ben will go along with this, and Jean (in a bit of a non sequitur), protests, "You know, you love a good steak, but you don't want to know how it got on your plate." Nancy enters as Blackie leaves and demands to know what Jean is going to do about Blackie. He waves her knife around before laughing and embracing her. That night, Jean and Blackie prepare Audrey's lethal overdose. She's annoyed with his continued interest in Nancy, nearly throwing her drink in his face when he says the little sister gives him "something new." Jean asks Blackie for a kiss when she's ready to storm away and then, as she least expects it, stabs her with his hidden knife, sliding her to the ground and licking the blood from his lips. He spots a crouched man watching him through a glass panel in the door and drops to his side, firing his gun several times before fleeing. In the woods outside One Eyed Jack's, Jean watches several men escape with Audrey over their shoulder; he holds a gun to a man on a walkie-talkie and demands identification - reaching into the man's pocket, Jean finds a state prosecutor's badge.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
A week later at One Eyed Jack's, Jean greets the "state prosecutor" (actually a local ex-con named Hank Jennings) and a shadowy accountant, Ernie Niles, who says he can arrange a major drug sale. The corrupt Mountie Preston King joins the trio in Jean's office, opened a briefcase to reveal several kilos of cocaine. He asks Ernie's help in unloading four kilos and tells Jean he hopes to plant a kilo in Cooper's car, framing the FBI agent. "I want him crucified," Jean growls.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
At the run-down Dead Dog Farm, Jean and the Mountie sell cocaine to Ernie and a slick out-of-town buyer. The Mountie notices that Ernie's chest is smoking, and pulls open his shirt to discover he's wired. Ernie and the buyer are taken hostage and Jean demands to see Cooper, who emerges over a nearby hill. He trades himself for the hostages and Jean, the Mountie, and Cooper hole up inside the farm as a squadron of police wait tensely outside. Jean considers killing Cooper even if they have to surrender, telling the agent that he blames him for his brother's death because before he arrived in town to investigate the murder of a young woman, everything ran smoothly in Twin Peaks. Maybe, Jean suspects, if he kills Cooper things will return to normal...even though clearly Jean himself has no way out at this point. The Mountie spots a waitress approaching the farm and Jean invites her in, accepting her tray but wondering why she looks familiar. Before he can figure it out, Cooper grabs a gun strapped to the waitress' leg and fires at Jean, who turns to run. A moment later he is doubling back to shoot Cooper from a safer spot However, he can barely stand and collapses dead to the ground, the last Renault felled in a month of terrible misfortune for their family.

Although Jean's storyline makes a big point of his relation to Jacques, it's actually easy to forget their connection. They are totally different characters, demonstrating divergent qualities and drawing our attention to different aspects of Twin Peaks' crime world. Jacques is earthy, hedonistic, and lowly; Jean is calculating, powerful, and ruthless. Yet Jean is also more sentimental than Jacques, sacrificing everything - including, ultimately, his own life - in a quixotic quest to avenge his family. Whereas Jacques is barely fazed by Bernie's death just a few days later, slurping up beer, lasciviously recalling an orgy (without much concern for his dead lover either), and plotting to make a cool ten thousand without a flicker of grief or fury for his dead brother. Jean exemplifies an aspect of Twin Peaks' underground simultaneously more romantic and more businesslike. Though he's French-Canadian rather than Italian, and far more hands-on than any Mafia don, he represents the Godfather model of crime boss, simultaneously sinister and noble. This places Twin Peaks in a slightly different genre context than it's dealt with before and indeed, Jean's quest for Cooper provides a more conventional framework for the series. It also, often explicitly, establishes Jean up as a predecessor to Windom Earle in the role of primary antagonist. Both Jean and Windom set Cooper back on his heels in a way no season one villain does, and they force him into a more classically heroic role where he's less the detective exploring a mystery than a cop-hero defending himself against baddies.

Jean has a strong entrance, softly trotting into Audrey's bedroom like the Big Bad Wolf (a backwards metaphor there, I guess). His unusual approach to Audrey, gently petting her and speaking calmly but firmly, provides an immediate contrast with the forceful way Blackie and Emory treat her in other scenes. It's an immediate indication of his character, the way he likes to toy with his victims before slaying them (as he will also do with Blackie). This is a perverse quality; there's no reason for him to act so chivalric toward a hostage he plans to kill anyway, but we get the sense that enjoys this game. The more we see of Jean, the clearer it becomes that he is willing to betray every person he works with. He exploits both Blackie's and Ben's ends of the proposed deal, flirts with Nancy and Blackie, and is willing to throw the Mountie under the bus for his own vengeful purposes. The intensity of Jean's desire to avenge Jacques and Bernie also comes into focus as he undercuts his own success to bring Cooper down. Ultimately, Jean is an intriguing character with a not-particularly-interesting plot. He fills a gap when Cooper needs an antagonist, but his obsessive quest feels necessarily forced; the best Parks can do to make it work is to effectively suggest an intense psychosexual compulsion lurking beneath the teleplays' contrivances.

It's unsurprising that Parks manages to create a hook into a character who shouldn't really be all that compelling. As Variety once wrote, "Parks has such light in his eyes, fire in his belly and a mellifluous purr in his voice that it would probably be a pleasure to watch him recite the Manitoba phone book." That mellifluous purr wasn't just for reading lines - Parks enjoyed a brief string of country hits in the early seventies, including "Long Lonesome Highway" which cracked Billboard's top 20. That song also provided the theme for Parks' short-lived but much-loved cult TV show Then Came Bronson in which he played a lone motorcyclist navigating the back roads of America. Initially a TV movie that caught fire when it was first expanded into a series in the wake of Easy Rider, Bronson only lasted one season. Parks never quite achieved the stardom many expected; he spent the next couple decades working steadily in television. His major comeback as a character actor arrived after Twin Peaks, when Gen X directors like Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino cast him in memorable parts, most famously Earl McGraw, the Texas Ranger featured in From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, and Grindhouse (as discussed in this memorable interview). Parks' connections to famous directors go way back; as a young man he befriended the legendary Jean Renoir (only a few letters off from Parks'Twin Peaks character, come to think of it) and he also played Adam (yes, that Adam) in John Huston's The Bible. (record album pictured, 1970)


Jean was written in individual screenplays by Robert Engels, Barry Pullman, Tricia Brock, and Harley Peyton as well as two collaborations (Engels and Peyton in one episode, Engels/Peyton/Mark Frost/Jerry Stahl in another). He was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, Todd Holland (twice), Graeme Clifford, and Tina Rathborne. If the actor's and his directors' anecdotes are any evidence, Parks could be an intimidating, insistent presence. Glatter (a "gal director" in one interview and a "chick...who's the director" in another) had to grapple with his forceful insistence on using the accent he'd developed; she seems more bemused than offended: "He had strong ideas, but that's never a problem to me, I find that interesting." Rathborne apparently also ran some resistance against the thick French-Canadian drawl, while Holland was forced to edit around Parks' slow speaking patterns when the actor refused to speed up his memorable delivery. Clifford, for his part, laughs, "I loved his accent!" Unlike the other big Renault, Parks never worked with Frost on the show. But, as a New Orleans resident connected to Twin Peaks and its casting director Johanna Ray, Parks was a natural for Frost's feature debut Storyville, in which he plays a slimy political operative who reacts violently (and I do mean violently) when questioned in a courtroom. Parks never worked with David Lynch but he met him once, during a dubbing session. Lynch entered the studio, pointed at Parks, and said simply, "Really good actor!"

Jean is onscreen for roughly nineteen minutes. He is in eleven scenes in five episodes, taking place over two weeks. He's featured the most in episode 20, when he holds Cooper hostage. His primary location is One Eyed Jack's. He shares the most screentime with the Mountie. He is one of the top ten characters in episode 20.




Episode 13: Truman locates Jean's mugshot in a large book and shares it with Cooper. He explains: "He runs the northern territories. Drugs, extortion, gambling; you name it." Cooper is shocked to discover that Audrey was nearly killed in part due to himself. Later, Cooper tells Ben that Jean killed Blackie.

Episode 17: FBI Agent Roger Hardy and the Mountie (before his corruption is revealed) show Cooper a picture of Jean and explain that the Mountie was setting up a sting which Cooper ruined with his raid.

Episode 18: Hank tells Ben that he doesn't work for him anymore; there's been a "hostile takeover" of One Eyed Jack's. A furious Ben accurately guesses that Jean is pulling Hank's strings and warns, "Hank, that man is a psychopath! A psy-cho-path! You're dancing with the devil!"

Episode 19: Audrey shows Cooper pictures taken by Bobby at Ben's behest. They depict Jean meeting with Hank, Ernie, and the Mountie and give Cooper the evidence he needs to pursue the sting operation that eventually kills Jean. When they get ahold of Ernie, he makes outrageous claims of torture and blackmail to justify his collusion with Jean.

Episode 20: Ernie calls Jean from the sheriff's station to set up the buy. He alternates between abject terror and false bravado ("Jean Renault is a hard man, but I've known men who'd make him quiver -").


• In the series, Jean doesn't recognize Hank and seems impressed by his state prosecutor's badge (which is confusing in its own right, but I'll address that in Hank's entry). This is contradicted in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks, which asserts that Hank worked closely with Jean from an early age. In fact, Jean had a hand in fixing a controversial high school football game with Hank's help: "Jean Renault--oldest son of deceased family patriarch Jean Jacques Renault--was overheard bragging during a poker game that he'd placed a substantial wager on underdog Kettle Falls in that game and then 'fixed' the outcome. When asked why he'd go to all that trouble to corrupt a high school football game, Jean laughed and was heard to say, in thickly accented English: 'Because I can.'"

• In deleted dialogue from episode 14, Audrey asks her father, "Did you know that Jean Renault was going to kill Emory and Blackie?" He answers, "Serves them right, doesn't it? They're the ones who kidnapped you." Audrey presses, and he says, "No."

•  It's never quite explained how the Mountie actually intended to operate in his supposed sting, since he is obviously working with Jean. Even if he lied to Roger, he must still have been telling his superiors and colleagues something to lead them to believe he was going to arrest Jean. And if he wasn't, what was his plan to let Jean off the hook? This is one convenient plot point that is hard to rationalize.

• Obviously Cooper needs to rescue Audrey at One Eyed Jack's, and it's definitely the highlight of this not-so-great subplot (actually the primary plot of episodes 9-12, in terms of screentime). However I can't help but feel there's a bit of a missed opportunity in the locale that Jean proposes: "Across the border, five mile east of Grand Fork on the road to Castlegar, is a bar called the Columbian. Behind it is a failed amusement park. Go to the merry-go-round. Leave the briefcase beside the horse with no head. At midnight, alone." Given its unfulfilled specificity, I wonder if this is a reference to a particular film or other work? If so, it escapes me...any ideas?


SHOWTIME: No, Parks is not on the cast list for 2017. Jean is gone, but his final monologue to lingers. Initially his condemnation of Cooper didn't do much for me. After all it's kinda forced; Cooper came to town and therefore it's his fault your brothers died?! However, it's grown on me lately - Parks' delivery almost sells the perverse notion of blaming Cooper, and as we get closer to a series in which we are certain to see Cooper's dark side, despite what he himself may wish for, "you brought the nightmare with you" seems ever more resonant.

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 Mayor of Twin Peaks is less interested in governing the town than partaking in a petty family feud and a peculiar romance.


Friday, February 24, 1989
The aged Mayor Dwyane Milford of Twin Peaks calls a town meeting to order. Far from controlling the event, however, he seems bewildered and distracted. "Is this thing on?" he demands of the microphone as Sheriff Harry Truman helps him adjust the volume and gently sits him back down. A high school student, one of the most beloved girls in town, has just been murdered and whether due to grief or anxiety, the town leader looks overwhelmed. FBI Agent Dale Cooper explains that this dead girl, as well as another who escaped (but is in no condition to identify her assailant), may be victims of the same serial killer that struck a year earlier. The Mayor's unsettled expression registers the agent's following statement: "Now, there is a chance the person who committed these crimes is someone from this town, possibly even someone you know." This is a chilling thought, and the mood in the room is somber.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Nearly three weeks later, the mood in the Haywards' living room is relaxed and easygoing. The townspeople are attending the wake of the person who committed those crimes, whom they did know - Leland Palmer, a respectable lawyer and the father of the victim. However, no one seems much perturbed by this revelation and chatter focuses on more trivial matters. In the Mayor's case, he is taunting his older brother Dougie, publisher of the Twin Peaks Gazette, who is about to marry a much younger woman. Dougie ignores most of his brother's jabs ("doesn't she feed you?" ... "changing diapers"), declaring "You're just jealous!" But when the Mayor sneers "Besides, she's cursed!" the brothers get into a shoving and kicking match and have to be separated, with Big Ed Hurley holding the Mayor back as Truman shouts, "Knock it off! Remember where you are and why we're here!"

Thursday, March 16, 1989
The Mayor scowls through his brother's wedding at the Great Northern Hotel. When the preacher reaches the statement "If there be anyone who knows not why this union should be made, let him speak now or forever hold his peace," the Mayor leaps to his feet and declares that Lana, the new bride, is only after Dougie's money, and he's too old to marry her. Truman escorts the Mayor out of the room. At the reception the Mayor grumbles endlessly to Pete Martell. "Let a woman walk by with play in her eye and jello in her walk, and he's a trout on a hook!" He even remarks, when Pete compliments the music, "It should have been the death march!"

Friday, March 17, 1989
And how right he is. The following morning, the Mayor enters the honeymoon suite in a mournful spirit, joining the cops and doctor gathered around his dead brother's bed to declare sadly, "I hate to say it but I told you so." The Mayor calls an erotic book "the murder weapon" and, as Andy escorts him out (he's always being escorted out, isn't he?), he pauses next to the weeping widow and accuses her of witchcraft. That night, Doc Hayward informs the Mayor that Dougie died of natural causes ("no foul play") but the Mayor is not convinced. "She killed him with sex!" he declares, as Hayward barely contains his laughter.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Lana screams in the hallway of the sheriff's station. Truman, Andy, Hawk, and Cooper race to her side to discover the Mayor holding her and Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, the outlandishly-dressed town psychiatrist, at gunpoint. The old man vows to kill Lana and Jacoby if anybody moves. Cooper decides it would be a good idea to send Lana into the conference room alone with the still-gun-toting Mayor, so they can "talk first." When the lawmen check up on the duo, Lana is sitting on the Mayor's lap and his face is covered with lipstick marks. "We've decided to adopt a child," the Mayor explains calmly.

Friday, March 24, 1989
Five days into their torrid love affair, the Mayor and Lana are sharing a tender moment at the RR Diner. "I'll do anything body and mind can stand," the horny old man declares. "Surely the last few days have been proof of that!" But Lana has something more compromising in mind - she wants the Mayor, an official judge of the upcoming Miss Twin Peaks contest, to declare her its winner. He's hesitant to cheat, but her seductive manner convinces him. Later on, at the Road House, the Mayor sits on a selection committee with Pete and Hayward, listening to Ben Horne pitch an environmental theme for the pageant. "What's he selling?" a skeptical Mayor queries. Afterwards though, he concedes, "The idea has merit." Then the Mayor is on to more crucial matters, grinning as he invites Lana up to the stage.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
The Mayor finds Lana at the Road House and tells her that Norma Jennings and Dick Tremayne are the judges, so she should be assured easy victory. The latter judge is "British or...Bahamian or something. He's bound to fall for your charms." He then encourages his beloved to cuckold him with Dick, and pleads that she marry him afterwards, weeping from sheer desire as she cradles him. That night at the same location, the Mayor welcomes a crowd to a dance on the eve of Miss Twin Peaks. He struggles again with a microphone which keeps sliding down the stand. While Cooper's date says the old man onstage is cute, Cooper watches him more intently. The Mayor grumbles, "This isn't right. There's something wrong here!"

Sunday, March 26, 1989
At the Road House again the next day, the Mayor brainstorms criteria for Miss Twin Peaks with Norma and Dick ("beauty and power" are the qualities he praises), Lana takes a break from her rehearsal. She asks Dick to help her find something in the storage closet and as she leads the already-trembling Tremayne away, the Mayor grins and blows them a well-wishing kiss. That evening, the Mayor sits beside a runway installed at the front of the Road House stage, observing the contestants with Dick and Norma by his side. After some respectful applause for his fiancee's rivals, the Mayor gapes in sheer delight at Lana's "contortionistic jazz exotica." When she finishes her routine, he shouts, "There, my friends, is a real artist!" He's less impressed by the eventual winner Annie Blackburn (nearly sleeping by the end of her speech) and his face falls when Lana gapes at him from the otherwise-joyful stage, as most of the other contestants flock to Annie's side. The Mayor angrily protests her victory: "She's been living in this town about fifteen minutes!" Dick insists that Annie's speech was beautiful, and the Mayor is left to consider what this upset means for his marriage prospects.

Like Andrew before him, the Mayor is a town father who isn't really there for his community. The circumstances are different, however. Andrew hides away from Twin Peaks and even plots its destruction whereas the mayor is always in the mix of townspeople, and his peccadilloes are mostly harmless (unless you consider the fixing of the Miss Twin Peaks contest equally important as the arson of the town's main industry). Indeed, the locals regard their wayward leader with much affection and amusement: he's more a beloved institution than a source of power and guidance. The Twin Peaks that the Mayor inhabits is more social than natural - we never see him wandering in the fresh air; he's usually in a crowd, attending big indoor events like the emergency meeting, the wake, the wedding, and the pageant (though he's missing from Laura's funeral). Perhaps surprisingly, given his melancholy if slightly bemusing first appearance, the Mayor represents Twin Peaks in its most broadly comic aspect. Even the potentially violent or melodramatic elements of his storyline are presented in the most farcical manner possible: this is Twin Peaks as straight-up sitcom, not murder mystery, horror show, or (except in broad outline) soap opera.

The Mayor's progression through Twin Peaks is highly unusual. He's present quite early, presiding over a crucial expository moment in the pilot before disappearing for sixteen episodes. Like Sylvia Horne and Heidi, he eventually returns; unlike them, he takes on a regular recurring role rather than a winking cameo. Viewers may not even remember who the Mayor is when he pops up at the wake, but they'll probably remember him afterwards (if not necessarily in a positive light). As I noted in Dougie's entry, the fight between the brothers marks a turning point in the series especially since it occurs at the site of what should be a tragic commemoration. (In fact Dougie and the Mayor are grappling in the exact spot where Bob crossed into the living room and terrorized Maddy eight episodes earlier.) Thus this character, initially a marker of our entrance into the world of Twin Peaks, becomes an indicator of our departure from that earlier spirit. And what of his actual storyline? As we move up in screentime, we are reaching characters who have not just one arc, but several. The Mayor's first plot sees long-simmering tensions with his brother spill over after his death, culminating in a confrontation that confirms suspicion: beneath his bluster, the Mayor really is just jealous a guy. Lana easily wins him over. That's that until the writers bring the Mayor back for a second storyline. This time the point is his devotion to Lana, and how far he'll go to please her. I'm hardly a fan of the first story (the Milfords' machinations are one of my least favorite parts of Twin Peaks, although I am fond of the character on his own terms). Yet this second story is arguably even more static and low-stakes. The Mayor simply swoons over Lana for several scenes and presides over Miss Twin Peaks-related activity without doing much to move the plot forward (aside from setting up the Dick seduction). There is potential here for overlap with some of Twin Peaks' main themes: the dangerous attraction of youth, the frustrated violence of the towns' patriarchs, the manipulation of sexuality, the possibility of supernatural interference in human affairs...but of course it's all handled in an offhand, cartoonish fashion. Ultimately, one's take on the Mayor depends on how much mileage one gets out of the actor's dedicated, amusing performance and is able to ignore the forced fluffiness of the material he's dealing with.

Boylan's greatest gift to Twin Peaks may simply be his old-school look and presence, further rooting the town in a bygone era (in this case, more the Depressed-but-dapper thirties/forties than the swooning teen-dream fifties). An Irish-American son of immigrants, he acted theatrically in his spare time and for stretches between other jobs - both locally (including bringing plays to a Pennsylvania penitentiary), and on trips to Philadelphia and Greenwich Village where he hobnobbed with luminaries like Burgess Meredith. Boylan also labored for four decades as a steelworker in Ohio and Pennsylvania, intially riding the rails looking for jobs and eventually settling down and retiring as a plant manager in 1975 (at which point he began pursuing screen work). Rooting himself in Seattle, Boylan was a natural pick for the Twin Peaks pilot, but when they wanted him back for her recurring part in season two he was acting in a play at the Seattle Rep. According to his Seattle Times obituary (which provides a great, illuminating little read), "He continued at the Rep but every Sunday night would fly to Los Angeles, film all day Monday, then return to Seattle in time for the Tuesday matinee. He was 79 at the time." As Boylan's New York Times obituary observes, "his silver hair and mustache earned him roles as amiable grandfathers or snooty butlers." Indeed Boylan's classic looks, voice, and bearing (and one suspects, that quintessentially twentieth-century history he carried around with him) fit the times perfectly. As the boomers hit middle age in the late eighties and early nineties there was a flush of nostalgia for an era they'd never experienced. Perhaps it never existed aside from Hollywood movies and, at a glance anyway, Boylan's own life: a mix of sophistication and dedication, grace and grit, where a hard-scrabble steelworker and a wandering intellectual bohemian could seem like two sides of the same quintessentially American coin. (film pictured: Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)


The Mayor was introduced in a teleplay by Mark Frost and David Lynch, and written in individual scripts by Tricia Brock, Barry Pullman (twice), and Scott Frost, as well as one Mark Frost/Harley Peyton and two Harley Peyton/Robert Engels collaborations. He is directed by David Lynch, Tina Rathborne, Duwayne Dunham, Caleb Deschanel, Uli Edel, Jonathan Sanger, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and Tim Hunter.

The Mayor is onscreen for roughly twenty minutes. He is in twelve scenes in eight episodes, taking place over one month. He's featured the most in episode 28, when he judges the Miss Twin Peaks contest. His primary location is the Road House. He shares the most screentime with Lana.





• The Mayor writes the appropriately eccentric message at the front of the Access Guide which states, "My advice to those who visit is to get out. Get out and enjoy the weather and whatever." He also writes, "I would like to pass on so many things to all of you. Not least of which would be the ability to look a total stranger in the eye and spout with a friendly air, 'Do you have that ten dollars you owe me?'"

• There aren't enough offscreen moments to justify a standalone section today, but after the Milfords storm out of the wake scene, Truman, Pete, and Hayward explain the brothers' history to Cooper (including Dougie's recent engagement). They chuckle over the fact that when Dwayne first ran for mayor in 1962, Dougie wrote an editorial opposing him...even though Dwayne was running unopposed!

• In deleted dialogue from episode 17, Pete recalls the Mayor's revenge for Dougie's editorial: "Dwayne was dog catcher at the time. So he let all the dogs from the pound loose in Dougie's house.""Damn dogs ate all the furniture," Doc recalls, "Broke up Dougie's third marriage too, as I recall."

• Episode 18 also contains deleted dialogue; as he's been escorted from the wedding, the Mayor shouts, "Why isn't anybody from her family here? Any of you asked yourselves that? Kind of peculiar, don't you think?" Later at the wedding he tells Pete how Dougie met Lana: "She started by taking one of Dougie's college classes. Ethics in Modern Journalism. Two things I guarantee you that little bird knows nothing about. Three weeks later she's landed a job writing for the Gazette." At the bar Truman speculates, "My theory is Dwayne's jealous."

• The teleplay for episode 28 extends the Mayor's final moments in the series a bit longer as he protests Annie's victory. "She stole half of it off a dead Indian, she plagiarized that speech -" he insists, to which Norma responds, "She didn't plagiarize, she quoted.""You voted for your own sister!" the Mayor tries one last time. Norma comes right back at him: "You voted for your girlfriend!" Neither on page nor screen do we witness the Mayor's reaction to the ensuing crisis, as Windom Earle attacks the pageant and the crowd becomes a terrified mob. As always, the Mayor's personal problems take priority over the crises of his community!

• We see quite a bit of the Mayor, long before he's been elected, in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Frost introduces "Scoutmaster Dwayne Milford" when he's a 21-year-old Boy Scout leader in the 1920s. Since Dougie is the central figure of the book, his brother keeps popping up and we learn further details of their rivalry although the timeline is shifted from what we heard on the series. Dougie actually endorses his brother's mayoral re-election when he buys the newspaper in 1969 (after its editor Robert Jacoby dies, although he later pops up writing an article in 1986...yeah, making sense of this chronology is probably a fool's errand!). Their falling-out owes more to politics than personality (although there is a lifelong clash between the future Mayor's steadfast discipline and his brother's more wayward adventurism). When President Nixon, a close friend of Dougie, resigns in 1974, Dougie writes an editorial: "The political career of a great American statesman died today, hoist on the petard of his own fungible morality, without question, but also, and perhaps even more so, the victim of a vengeful and venomous political vendetta." The Mayor, a very left-wing "socialliberal," despises this stand and his brother's increasingly right-wing politics in general. The Mayor is also publicly suspicious about the source of Dougie's immense wealth. The book tells us that Lana spent six months in Twin Peaks after Dougie's death but despite providing "great comfort and emotional support during that time to our grieving mayor," she was waiting for probate to close. Far from marrying her besotted old brother-in-law, the recent widow fled Twin Peaks with her fortune as soon as she was able. No word on how the Mayor managed his undoubtedly broken heart.


SHOWTIME: No, Boylan is not on the cast list for 2017. He passed away in 1994 and would be well over a hundred years old today, as would the character (although Hank Worden, the Room Service Waiter, beat Boylan by a decade as Twin Peaks' oldest performer). What happened to the Mayor after Lana left? I can't say I hold out much hope for him. His brother gone, his lover deserted, his town descended into chaos, this probably felt like a good time for the addled old man to check out. A different question: who is mayor of Twin Peaks today? Has the Milford legacy continued to the present? (We never meet or hear about the Mayor's children, but he was married for half a century.) Will one of the characters we already know take up the reigns?

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.

Lana's "curse" attracts and haunts the men she meets in Twin Peaks, but this naive bewitchment eventually gives way to more down-to-earth calculation.


Thursday, March 16, 1989
Lana stands at a makeshift altar in the Great Northern Hotel with Dougie Milford, a man about sixty years her senior. The blushing bride's nuptials are interrupted by Dougie's angry brother, who registers his objections when the preacher casually says, "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Lana looks upset - but maybe also just a bit coldly irritated - as this other Milford, actually the Mayor of Twin Peaks, is escorted out. At the reception, Dougie and Lana dance in marital bliss, and she feeds him a piece of the cake. She is impressed to meet FBI Agent Dale Cooper - "You solved that Laura Palmer case, huh?" (referring to the recent murder of a local teenager) - before Dougie whisks her away again.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Lana runs screaming through the halls of the Great Northern, passing by a stunned Bobby Briggs. A while later, she is seated mournfully outside the honeymoon suite where her husband lies dead. On his way out of the room, the Mayor turns towards her and accuses her of witchcraft. A weeping Lana agrees with his assessment, telling Deputy Hawk Hill that she's cursed; ever since she was a teenager and broke the braces of a boy she was kissing at the prom, her relationships have ended badly. That night Hawk continues to comfort her at the sheriff's station, mixing a bottle of Irish whiskey with some milk for the "widow Milford." In forlorn yet sultry fashion, Lana leans against the doorway and Sheriff Harry Truman, Deputy Andy Brennan, Dick Tremayne, and Doc Hayward stare at her in thunderstruck disbelief; Dick and Hayward even begin reciting Romeo and Juliet. They all gather around her in the conference room, and listen with goofy grins on their faces as she tells them a bizarre story about her cousin, a rodeo clown.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Andy, Truman, Hawk, and Cooper join Lana and Dr. Lawrence Jacoby in that same conference room a few days later. Jacoby explains that he's spent the past twenty-four hours with Lana and she's no witch; she has a "heightened sexual drive and a working knowledge of technique, anatomy, and touch that few men have ever had the pleasure of experiencing or the skills to match." Proud of the diagnosis, they march off to go bowling...only to be confronted by the Mayor in the hallway. Pointing a double-barrel rifle in their direction he warns: "Anybody that moves, I'll blast her into kingdom come. And the hippie too." Cooper brokers a peace by inviting the awkward in-laws to talk it over in the conference room, allowing the Mayor to take his weapon with him and closing the door behind them. Under these circumstances, Lana takes the safest route, and when the lawmen return to the room she and the Mayor, with lipstick kisses dotting his face, are cuddling and announcing they plan to adopt a child. She swoons over how much he reminds her of Dougie as they exit the room hand in hand.

Friday, March 24, 1989
After a week of apparently nonstop lovemaking, Lana and her lover relax at the RR Diner. She calmly asks a favor, or rather makes a gentle demand: "I wanna win the Miss Twin Peaks contest." The Mayor, who is judging the pageant, doesn't quite get her meaning and a look of frustration crosses her face before she repeats herself more firmly. As he demurs, she presses the issue, employing both insistence and seduction to get her way. That afternoon, after filling out her admission form, she enrolls in the contest at the Road House with a committee of which the mayor is a part. In the evening, she assists Dick at a wine-tasting event in the Great Northern, happily answering his open questions, even correctly guessing that one of the wines has a slight taste of banana.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
The Mayor finds Lana in the Road House and tells her that Dick will be one of the judges. He encourages her to seduce him so that two judges will support her. Then the Mayor breaks down, longing to elope with Lana. She tells him they'll marry only after she becomes Miss Twin Peaks.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
The next morning, Lana practices her choreography at the Road House. During a rehearsal break, she wanders up to Dick and coyly asks for him to help her find an "important prop" in the storage room. The room is dark so Dick turns on a flashlight but Lana keeps shutting it off and rubbing up against him. Eventually, she "finds what she's looking for" in the dark room and Dick sounds equally pleased with her discovery. That night, Lana joins the rest of the chorus for the big show at the Road House. For her individual event, she wows quite a few men in the room with her "contortionistic jazz exotica," a wildly exaggerated Orientalist/Hollywood riff on a belly dance. Dick gapes and the Mayor is absolutely thrilled. It's not enough, however...when the final announcement is made, Lana doesn't win and as the other contestants flock to the winner's side in gracious enthusiasm, a shocked Lana stares at the Mayor in disbelief. She doesn't have long to wallow in her discontent, however; the lights go out in the Road House and there are several explosions. Lana and the other women scream and race around stage, attempting to escape the pandemonium. She flees close on Shelly Johnson's heels amidst the strobe-inflected smoke.

A southern belle, Lana obviously isn't originally from Twin Peaks, and it's uncertain how long she's lived in town. However, she has the longest list of character interactions of anyone so far, and she appears at - is indeed central to - two of the town's biggest events: Miss Twin Peaks and her own wedding. She even dates the town's mayor. Another link to the town is her vaguely supernatural aura, though this is shot down by Jacoby. And of course she embodies one of the town's most consistent subjects, the attractive young woman navigating a world of powerful, sex-hungry older men (interesting that Lana is one of the few characters to bring up Laura Palmer in the show's later episodes). She does so, however, in a consistently comedic vein. The Milford subplot is some of Twin Peaks' goofiest material. The tone is always wacky, almost smirking in its ludicrous execution. Indeed, if it wasn't handled in such a casually flippant, sitcom-y manner, Cooper's decision to send an armed, angry old man into a room alone with a terrified young woman would be a premature concession that BOB is already strong with him.

Like the Mayor, Lana has two arcs. Unlike him, she almost emerges as two different characters in a separate analysis of these arcs. In her first storyline, Lana is a happy newlywed quickly turned grieving widow before rebounding with an in-law. She comes off as vaguely naive, naturally exercising her sexual power without much conscious intention while also accepting that she may be a witch. In this plot, Lana is usually passive - her one moment of decisive action occurs offscreen when she seduces the Mayor. For the most part, she's argued and ogled over. In her second storyline, Lana's hungry ambition causes her to cheat her way into becoming the local beauty queen, a task which she ultimately fails (it's an interesting goal, considering she is an out-of-towner; what is she trying to prove?). Starting right away with that diner scene after a five-episode absence, Lana presents herself very differently. She is ruthlessly eager to attain her goal - winning the Miss Twin Peaks contest - and manipulates both the Mayor and Dick with calculated prowess (in several moments, she is noticeably exasperated, exhibiting an intelligence that was completely hidden in the earlier episodes). I noted in the Mayor's entry that this second storyline may be even less compelling than the first; there's a lot of filler since the required actions are fairly simple. However, in Lana's case it definitely offers more compelling character development - providing her with a more active, subtle role, less a simple object of everyone else's attention.

Lively was one of the youngest actors on Twin Peaks; on a show where twentysomethings often played teenagers, she was a teenager playing a twentysomething. As a reference point, she's only six years older than the actor who played Little Nicky. A child/teen actor throughout the eighties, she appeared in numerous TV shows (including Punky Brewster, where she plays an orphan), The Karate Kid III (in which her role had to be rewritten because she was a minor while her intended love interest, Ralph Macchio, was twenty-seven) and, perhaps most famously, Teen Witch. I missed that film as a kid, but several years ago on the Twin Peaks Rewatch forum, the user Argobot posted some clips and, well...they are are deliciously cheesy and worth watching. The film is something of a cult favorite, including with Lively's little sister Blake (like at least a dozen other Twin Peaks cast/crew members, Lively has celebrity siblings/offspring). Lively has appeared regularly on television throughout the past three decades, including recurring roles as a nurse on two shows (Doogie Howser, M.D. and Chicago Hope) and as Casey Wagonmaster on a full season of George & Leo. Most recently, she plays the mother of the title character in Gortimer Gibbons' Life on Normal Street, an Amazon children's series; a third season has been shot but not yet aired. She also pops up in "Dual Spires", the 2010 episode of Psych that pays tribute to Twin Peaks in both subject and casting - she's one of seven Twin Peaks alums to guest star. On the episode she is married to Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs), who owns the town diner. Their daughter Paula Merrill is murdered and found wrapped in plastic by a lake. (Psych appearances are something I'm going to start noting each entry; I just went back to add a reference for Catherine Coulson, the only previous guest.) (film pictured: promotion for Teen Witch, 1989)



Lively reportedly knew Lynch and was recruited personally by him although she never appeared in any of his episodes. Lana is introduced by Barry Pullman (who also wrote her final episode), and her other teleplays were authored by Harley Peyton and Robert Engels (in two collaborations), Scott Frost, and a Mark Frost/Harley Peyton collaboration. In fact, I suspect Frost - who wrote the first episode of her second storyline - was behind her shift toward a more conniving, clever character, considering both his general interest in such characters and how he deals with her in The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Lana is directed by Duwayne Dunham, Caleb Deschanel, Uli Edel, Jonathan Sanger, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and Tim Hunter.

Lana is onscreen for roughly twenty minutes. She is in thirteen scenes in six episodes, taking place over ten days. She's featured the most in episode 28, when she competes in Miss Twin Peaks. Her primary location is the Road House. She shares the most screentime with the Mayor. She is one of the top five characters in episode 28.




• Lana is mentioned a few times leading up to her first appearance, but never by name. In episode 17 the Mayor and Dougie argue over her at Leland Palmer's wake (where the Mayor denies being jealous, taunting Dougie about Lana's age while alleging she's cursed). Other wake guests reveal that Dougie has been married many times. In episode 18, the crew at the sheriff's station jokes about Dougie's endless weddings: "Dougie's weddings are a seasonal thing," Hawk comments, "like the return of the salmon." Andy and Hawk show their gifts for the Milfords: a matching ascot/scarf set which the script describes as "two loud, almost road-kill plaid scarves."

• When she marches up to the stage at the Miss Twin Peaks try-outs, Bobby watches her and snarks, "Does anybody smell a fix here?"

• The only female character who really reacts to Lana in any way is Lucy - and she doesn't like her. In fact, she's infuriated when she sees the men (and especially Andy) fawning over her at the sheriff's station and irritated as Dick flirts with her at the wine-tasting (this inspires her to spit her wine in his face, although her excuse is that she's pregnant).

• Lana's unique otherworldly effect on men is a tough sell in a town already populated by women played by Sherilyn Fenn, Madchen Amick, Joan Chen, Peggy Lipton, Sheryl Lee, Lara Flynn Boyle, Heather Graham, and so on. Lively herself knew this, and settled on an exaggerated Southern accent as the quality that could set Lana apart.

• In Mark Frost's The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks, Lana - despite her small part on the show - is featured in several prominent pages (significantly more than, ahem, a certain Miss Twin Peaks, which must satisfy Lana wherever she is now; mysteriously, when giving public readings, Frost frequently refers to the widow Milford as the true winner of the contest). No wonder she makes the cut; her beau is the star of the book. Frost relishes descriptions of Lana's conniving charms and is worth quoting at length: "...she'd drifted in on a breeze -- no one could recall exactly when, but it was recent. Lana's form was her fate: She had the legs of a chorus girl, the chassis of a sleek jungle cat and a face poised precisely between perky and provocative. Soon after securing a job at the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan -- where, one assumes, she assayed a glance at Doug's balance sheet -- Lana locked onto her target like a Hellfire missile from the moment he entered her sights. She proceeded to conduct the kind of purposeful campaign to bring down her prey that the younger Doug Milford would have recognized, professionally appreciated and avoided like dengue fever. This was not the younger Milford." Frost goes on to describe how their romance began, when Lana "accidentally" locked them in the bank vault (this runs contrary to deleted dialogue for episode 18, in which the Mayor explains that his brother was teaching a course on journalism and Lana was one of his students.) Far from marrying the Mayor, Lana leaves town "once the check cleared" (Dougie signed no prenuptial agreement "so if fortune hunting was indeed Lana's game, she bagged her limit.") The text's narrator speculates that Lana may have been an assassin, given Dougie's shadowy history with the U.S. government and assorted conspiracies.

• We also learn that Lana had a fling with Donald Trump: "She allegedly fled to the Hamptons, and briefly dated a bizarrely coiffed real estate mogul before marrying a hedge fund manager -- sounds about right."


SHOWTIME: No, Lively is not on the cast list for 2017. Lana's fate will (probably) remain a mystery, beyond what Frost describes in his book. As will her true motives - even in a text unafraid to clarify certain ambiguous characters (see Josie), Lana's inner life remains hidden. Was she a kid in over her head, a witch embedded in a web of magic, a conniving gold digger, a professional killer? Lana has often, understandably, been dismissed as a one-note sexist stereotype, but perhaps within the unanswered questions of her past and future we can glimpse a more intriguing figure...and grant Twin Peaks the benefit of the doubt.

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.

Gerard is a mild-mannered, dutiful salesman who requires medicine to maintain his health but manages reasonably well within humble means.

And.


Monday, February 20, 1989
In a dark motel room, dawn light barely filtering in through the drawn curtains, a shirtless one-armed man is seated on the floor. He is Phillip Michael Gerard, a shoe salesman, but shoes don't seem to be on his mind at the moment. Eerily he warbles, "Fire... walk... with... me..." while lifting the flame from twelve candles in a circle, almost as if moving and speaking backwards. Some deep presence stirs through this ritual. Later that morning Gerard emerges like a Fury from the underworld in his camper van, beeping his horn at the convertible in front of him and swerving around a crosswalk so that he pulls up right next to the other vehicle, staring directly at the driver (who avoids eye contact). During the proceeding tirade, Gerard waves his hand at the people he's shouting at, revealing a green ring on his finger with a peculiar insignia. "YOU STOLE THE CORN," Gerard yells over the cacophony of a revving engine, a beeping horn, and two other screaming people (the man driving, and his blonde daughter in the passenger seat), "UNDER THE CAN, OVER THE STORE! AND MISS, THE LOOK ON HER FACE, WHEN IT WAS OPENED. IT WAS...A STILLNESS. LIKE THE FORMICA TABLE TOP! THE THREAD WILL BE TORN, MR. PALMER! THE THREAD WILL BE TORN! IT'S HIM, IT'S YOUR FATHER!!!" He then peels away and roars off into the distance from whence he came.

Thursday, February 23, 1989
Gerard runs through the woods, shouting "BOB!" He enters and exits a cabin, following the sound of screams. Eventually he reaches an abandoned train car and bangs on the door, demanding, "Let me in! Let me in!" A girl inside, bloody and dirty in a white slip, helps him to shove the door open but just as the gap widens sufficiently to let her out (or Gerard in) a figure bashes her over the head and knocks her to the ground. Gerard rushes toward the opening and his ring rolls inside the train car before the door closes. Gerard stands outside the train car listening and walks away, deeper into the woods...

In a Red Room with a chevron floor and billowing red curtains, Gerard is seated next to the Man From Another Place, a little person in a red suit who is positioned where Gerard's left arm would be. Leland Palmer, the driver in that traffic confrontation, enters the room with blood on his shirt. Gerard and the Little Man stare as Leland tilts toward the ground at a sharp angle and then hovers in the air. BOB, a long-haired ghoul in a jean jacket, scowls at his onlookers. The Little Man touches Gerard's left stub and stares at him as they say, in unison, "BOB, I want all my garmonbozia." The Little Man returns to his seat and Gerard continues to stare as BOB reaches toward Leland's shirt, sucks the bloodstain out and spatters blood all over the floor. The blood disappears and the Little Man devours a spoonful of creamed corn.

Friday, February 24, 1989
Gerard takes an elevator ride at Calhoun Memorial Hospital with an FBI agent and the town sheriff. They don't speak and his back is turned to them. He exits first.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
Gerard exits the hospital elevator again, walking toward a staff-restricted area flooded with blue light.

The FBI agent, Dale Cooper, in town to investigate the murder of the girl in that train car, dreams that Gerard appears to him in the hospital. However, the one-armed man introduces himself as "MIKE" before reciting a poem: "Through the darkness of future past the magician longs to see, one chants out between two world: Fire, walk with me!" He explains that he and BOB lived above a convenience store, and that his left shoulder had contained a tattoo "touched by the devilish one." When he "saw the face of God," he was changed and "took the entire arm off."

Tuesday, February 28, 1989
Agent Cooper, Sheriff Harry Truman, Deputy Hawk Hill, and Deputy Andy Brennan barge in on Gerard's room at the Timber Falls Motel, startling him (he has just come from the shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist). Their guns are drawn and Truman demands, "Put your hands where I can see them!" Gerard, of course, only has one to raise. A few minutes later, allowed to sit on the bed and don a shirt (the guns have been put away), Gerard is unable to identify a police sketch of a long-haired man despite the sheriff's insistence ("he kinda looks like somebody, doesn't he?"). On the other hand, he readily acknowledges his best friend Bob Lydecker when asked. Lydecker is a veterinarian who was assaulted outside a bar in the Lowtown section of Twin Peaks "three days ago" according to Truman (though that would place it after Gerard's first sighting at the hospital). Gerard has been visiting his comatose friend ever since. Hawk confirms that Gerard has no arrests or warrants. Gerard tells Cooper his middle name is Michael ("named after my uncle") and explains how he lost his arm: years ago, he was selling pharmaceuticals "on the road from Memphis to some place" when he got into a car accident. Andy clumsily opens Gerard's suitcase, spilling his sample shoes; the salesman explains his new vocation and offers to pitch his product to the sheriff's department if they are interested. Cooper brusquely inquires if Gerard's missing arm had a tattoo. Gerard starts sobbing and affirms: "It said...Mom!"

Friday, March 3, 1989
Gerard arrives at the sheriff's station with a sample case. The receptionist asks his business and Gerard explains that, while he has no specific appointment, the sheriff invited him to come by at his earliest convenience to sell some shoes.

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Truman takes a look at Gerard's selection, debating utility, quality, and economics. Gerard is in his element until he spies a poster with that same sketch of the long-haired man. Although he was unflustered by it in the motel, this time it really bothers him and he nearly passes out. Gerard tells Truman he feels ill and requests the restroom so he can take his medication. Inside he tries to inject himself but is prevented by violent spasms. A seizure eventually subsides and he emerges from the stall, grinning and calling out, "BOB, I know you're near. I'm after you now."

Wednesday, March 8, 1989
Hawk escorts a distressed Gerard into the station. "Since when is it against the law to sell shoes?" he (rather reasonably) pleads, to no avail. Truman says he's wanted for questioning and he is taken into the conference room. That night, Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and an FBI agent named Gordon Cole (who pointed at Gerard earlier and shouted, "THERE'S THE ONE-ARMER NOW!") surround a seated Gerard. Gordon notes the chemical composition of Gerard's drug, and Cooper asks if he suffers from schizophrenia but Gerard moans, "It's too late..." Cooper accuses him of lying about knowing the man on the poster and Gerard whimpers, "It wasn't me, don't you understand, it wasn't me!" before shuddering, gurgling loudly, and leaning backwards in his chair. Then he loudly exhales and slowly sits upright. His bearing is altogether different now: calm, haughty even, and assertive. "There is no need for medicine," he insists. "I am not in pain." He informs the lawmen that he is an inhabiting spirit named MIKE and that Gerard is "host to me." He identifies the man in the poster as BOB and vows that his one goal is "to stop him!" He cannot reveal where BOB comes from, but does reveals that BOB is a "parasite" who "attaches itself to a life form and feeds ... on fear and the pleasures." BOB was once MIKE's familiar and partner until MIKE's conversion experience (reiterated from the dream, except now he says he was "purified" rather than "changed"). BOB has had the same host for forty years, and at present he is in "a large house made of wood, surrounded by trees. The house is filled with many rooms each alike but occupied by different souls night after night." Cooper immediately recognizes this as the Great Northern Hotel.

Thursday, March 9, 1989
Gerard, still presenting as MIKE, gathers with the lawmen for coffee in the lobby of the station the following morning. A bit less regal, looking more disheveled now, Gerard repeats his riddle about the Great Northern word for word. The others listen and then politely carry on; Truman says the Great Northern is ready for them, and Gordon heads off to Bend, Oregon after telling the others to "take care of MIKE!" At the Great Northern, surrounded by the sounds of bouncing balls, Gerard watches a long line of guests pass by (including the Japanese businessman Mr. Tojamura) as he shakes his head "no" for each. He grows agitated and falls to the floor raising his arm up in agony. Ben Horne emerges into the lobby, demanding to know what's going on as Cooper and Doc Will Hayward tend to the suffering man.

Friday, March 10, 1989
Gerard's left stub twitches and he wakes up with a start, still under MIKE's sway: "He's close!" He sends the nurse out and whacks the guarding cop over the head before leaping out a window. Hawk catches Gerard and brings him to the station where he is instructed to check Ben Horne for BOB. He walks around Ben, sniffing loudly and declaring that BOB is not there, irritating Ben's brother/attorney Jerry. Truman charges Ben with the murder of Laura Palmer and demands Gerard be locked up at the Great Northern, with his windows nailed shut.

Saturday, March 11, 1989
Gerard appears to be dying of dehydration, but Cooper asks Hayward not to administer his drug just yet. The desperate FBI agent pleads for help from "MIKE," and receives some further clarification about his relationship to BOB, confirmation of the Giant's existence ("He is known to us"), and told "You have all the clues you need." A sweaty, shuddering Gerard places his hand on Cooper's head - "the answer is not here" - before lowering the hand to Cooper's heart - " it is here" - and then collapses in bed as Cooper exits and Hayward hopefully prepares the dosage that will bring him back.

With Gerard, or rather with MIKE (whom this entry isn't officially about, but whom it can't help covering almost entirely), we plunge fully into the spirit world of Twin Peaks. We already glimpsed the Red Room and the Man From Another Place through the Waiter, but Gerard not only takes us inside this other realm, he articulates it. Cooper's dream, Gerard's sickbed scene, and especially Gerard's transformation and monologue spell out the dynamics of the Twin Peaks cosmology in an explicit fashion we simply haven't encountered yet. Only the Log Lady touched on this much mythology, but her scene had more to do with vague, unidentifiable icons of this world - the owls, the fire, the wood - rather than the mechanics of inhabiting spirits. Of course, as we reach the halfway point of this character series, this entry also introduces us to garmonbozia.

We are now grappling with some of the most difficult questions in Twin Peaks and indeed, there are few more difficult characters than Gerard/MIKE. As our characters' screentime grows more extensive, the often ad hoc nature of their development becomes a necessary topic. In Gerard's case this make-it-up-as-we-go-along quality merges deftly with the character's own ambiguities. To what extent is Gerard's unreliability inevitable evolution vs. intentional obfuscation? So much of Twin Peaks' frustration and power lies at the nexus of these two modi operandi, and for that reason among many others, "the one-armed man" is a signature presence for the town and the show. Even in his more mundane form, though, the shoe salesman is an intriguing figure, a character existing on the outskirts of the community's center of gravity (I hope we get to visit Lowtown someday), just like Ronette and a few others before him. (Incidentally, that camper drives under Ronette's bridge when racing up behind Leland's car in Fire Walk With Me.)

On another note, Gerard reveals a dark side to our heroes and, simultaneously, the show's ability to suspend disbelief or skepticism (not just about supernatural phenomena but proper law enforcement procedure). By any reasonable assessment, Gerard is a victim of serious and persistent police harassment/abuse: he is ambushed by armed cops in his residence without any warning knock and then sharply rebuked and threatened (by Cooper especially, who is incredibly and consistently rude) despite having not even the slightest connection to an ongoing investigation...aside from a detective's dream and his own disability. Gerard is later scooped up and taken into custody (perhaps his drugs are illegal, though he doesn't seem to actually be under arrest), held prisoner for days without charge, and denied essential medicine as his body deteriorates and he hovers near death. If and when Gerard re-emerges from his fugue state, he's entitled to one hell of a lawsuit against the Twin Peaks sheriff's department and the federal government.

Very few character's "journeys" are as hard to parse as Gerard's. When we talk about his arc, are we measuring from Fire Walk With Me to episode 16, or from the pilot to Fire Walk With Me? And are we focusing on Gerard the human host, MIKE the spirit, or some combination of both? Chronologically, "the one-armed man" is a very baffling presence. We meet him as a strange esoteric figure, yelling at strangers, chasing a killer through the woods, and appearing in an ethereal netherworld to demand something called "garmonbozia," defined in a subtitle as pain and sorrow but looking for all the world like creamed corn. When we next see this nameless oddball, he's walking in and out of hospital corridors in the human world, a calm but silent presence. Finally the cops catch up with him...and he's a mild-mannered shoe salesman who doesn't recognize the same BOB he gathered corn from. Is this a twin? Is he lying? The following scenes "explain" what's going on - apparently he is sometimes possessed by a spirit named MIKE - but opens up further, more confounding questions. Why, even as the spirit, does he seem unable to identify BOB's host (whom he had no problem identifying earlier)? Why does he claim to want to stop him while never mentioning this garmonbozia stuff? As his power fades, the character who began as an angry wandering eccentric and turned into a quiet salesman winds up a spirit-channeling shaman of sorts. The material doesn't quite flow.

Observed in production order, however, Gerard's narrative yields to a certain logical progression. First the one-armed man is presented as a mystery figure. Then he's revealed as a seemingly ordinary man. Than he branches off into a split personality with clues to a larger mystery. Finally he is placed as an active presence in the central drama of the story: the murder of Laura Palmer, and the defeat of BOB through her refusal to submit to him. Indeed, if Gerard tosses her the Owl Cave ring, as the editing strongly suggests, he's even partially responsible for that defeat. While the contradictions linger, the development of this character has a certain forward momentum and expansive quality in this telling. There is also a "coming-together" of the disparate figures. It's reasonable to assume that Gerard is MIKE the entire time we see him in Fire Walk With Me given his behavior (starting with the fire ritual and chant in the deleted scene). Yet, especially noticeable when he's shouting at Leland, he doesn't speak in the booming MIKE baritone of the show (along with his initially upright bearing, one of the primary distinctions between Gerard and MIKE). In that sense, at least, Lynch subtly blurs the boundaries between this spirit and host as he does with Leland/BOB. The film also muddies MIKE's moral purpose, but I'll save that for an upcoming omnibus entry on "The Spirits of Twin Peaks."

Strobel is a thespian with just a handful of screen credits, mostly following Twin Peaks, before he retired in 2005. The films all appear to be spooky horror movies or thrillers ("Man in Dream" in the 1990 video Sitting Target, for example) with one exception: the Kate Hudson vehicle Ricochet River, whose atmosphere certainly sounds Twin Peaks-y. IMDb mentions "a backwoods logging town,""high school sweethearts," and "a sensitive Native American"; Strobel is credited simply as "The One-Armed Man." Strobel's most memorable appearances may be in Twin Peaks-related material. He makes for a captivating interview, most notably in the "Postcard From the Cast" featured on The Entire Mystery blu-ray set (it was originally recorded for a 2001 DVD release). In this ten-minute video he recalls the teenage near-death experience that unfolded when he lost his arm in a car accident; it's worth seeking out and watching in full, as riveting in its delivery as anything on the series. In 2015, when Lynch temporarily walked away from the Showtime project, Strobel contributed to the cast's homemade video "Twin Peaks without David Lynch is Like..." He finished that sentence with, "...a fire without the heat." And then a long pause and a sigh... (pictured with Frank Silva at an early Twin Peaks Festival, mid-1990s)


Mark Frost co-writes Gerard's first few silent cameos, and, solo, pens his return in the season two premiere and his assistance to the police investigation in the killer's reveal episode. Frost also collaborates with Harley Peyton and Robert Engels on the teleplay for Gerard's last appearance. The scene has very Frostian overtones, with MIKE providing essential clues and a spiritual ethos to follow. Did he write it? Engels also has a penchant for this character. His two solo scripts contain some of Gerard's most memorable bits (the motel room and the first transformation into MIKE), and he collaborates with Peyton on Gerard/MIKE's big scene in the episode before the reveal. Furthermore, he co-writes Fire Walk With Me, which resurrects Gerard after a long absence from the series. For all that, the genesis of "The One-Armed Man" as a recurring character is definitely down to David Lynch. The character wis introduced in the pilot purely as a one-off gag, a one-armed extra as an affectionate nod to that other classic TV murder mystery, The Fugitive (one of the few shows Lynch would explicitly reference in interviews; in fact, Philip Gerard is the name of the detective on that series). At lunch one day Lynch spontaneously asked his editor, Duwayne Dunham, "What would you think of a guy who cut his arm off to remove a tattoo?" Needing material for an "alternate ending" (see the new section below), Lynch sketched out a quick page of dialogue and cast the actor. In addition to co-writing the first two appearances and the film, Lynch directs Gerard in four episodes (including the dream sequence originally shot for the alternate ending). Dunham, initially perplexed by Lynch's lunchtime outburst, directs Gerard's second appearance, and Caleb Deschanel directs Gerard's penultimate episode (written by Scott Frost, the only writer outside that core four to touch Gerard). The two non-Lynch directors who contribute the most to this character are Tim Hunter and Lesli Linka Glatter. Hunter directs the first episode in which we really meet Gerard as a character (his most normal, if still offbeat, scene), and returns to direct his last scene in the series, when he's fully MIKE on his sickbed. Glatter directs Gerard's two transformation episodes, deftly guiding the transition from meek Gerard to majestic MIKE.

Gerard is onscreen for roughly twenty-two minutes. He is in nineteen scenes in ten episodes, taking place over three weeks (as well as in a dream and another realm of reality). He's featured the most in episode 13, when the authorities draw MIKE out by refusing to administer Gerard's drug. His primary location is the sheriff's station. He shares the most screentime with Cooper. Despite his importance to the series, like the Log Lady he never cracks the top ten of any episode.




Episode 2: Hawk calls Cooper to tell him he saw a one-armed man at the hospital. Cooper does not mention that he already saw this man in the elevator with Truman.

Episode 3: When Cooper explains his dreams, he adds something we didn't actually see in the dream: "BOB vowed to kill again, so MIKE shot him."

Episode 4: When they arrive at Lydecker's Veterinary Clinic (slogan: "Aid to the Beast Incarnate") Cooper notices a convenience store next door and tells Truman, "In my dream, MIKE said he and BOB lived above a convenience store." (We will eventually see a "room above a convenience store" inhabited by spirits in Fire Walk With Me but, interestingly, MIKE is not there - at least not in Gerard's form.)

Episode 10: Truman asks if anyone's seen Gerard - "I came back from lunch and his sample case was gone." Cooper is shocked that "the one-armed man" (as he persistently refers to Gerard) was at the station without his knowledge. He reminds Truman of his dream and proceeds to the bathroom where he checks every stall until he finds Gerard's needle on the floor. Holding it in a gloved hand, he refers to one of the Giant's clues: "Without chemicals, he points."

Episode 11: Cooper spots the logo on Andy's boots - Circle Brand - which matches the boots found on Leo's property. Andy says Gerard sold him this pair.

Episode 12: Truman tells Hawk to look for the one-armed man, and later Hawk informs Truman and Cooper that he's been "staying at a motel on Highway 9" but he hasn't been seen in a few days. Hawk reveals a paper bag full of syringes and vials that he found in the room.

Episode 14: When Cooper comes across some clues about Ben Horne in Laura's diary and from Audrey, he reminds Truman that Gerard collapsed at the Great Northern as soon as Ben entered the room.

Episode 15: Several scenes are spent reacting to Gerard's escape and re-capture from the Great Northern. Cooper interrupts Truman's conversation with Pete to launch a search, and Cooper is talking golf with Leland when they receive the call that Gerard has been found.

Episode 25: Nine episodes after his last appearance, "Gerard, the one-armed man," is briefly mentioned one last time. Gordon Cole reveals that Windom Earle was once on Haliperidol, and Hayward remembers that this was Gerard's drug.

Fire Walk With Me: After Gerard drives away from Laura and Leland, Leland rants about how that man came "out of the blue like that." Laura asks if he knows him, and wonders why he seems familiar to her.

In the winter of 1989, as the Twin Peaks pilot was being filmed in and around Seattle, David Lynch and Mark Frost had another matter to worry about. In order to finance the pilot, which ABC was hesitant to provide with a full budget, Lynch/Frost Productions had secured a distribution deal that required them to shoot a "closed ending." This way, if the network rejected the series, the pilot could still be released as a feature film in Europe (hence the "European ending" or "European version" as this extra twenty-two minutes is sometimes called). Lynch and Frost didn't give it much thought but when they were ahead on schedule, they quickly cooked up a wacky resolution with Lynch, it seems, doing most of the cooking. Intrigued by the idea of a man who cut his own arm off to purge himself of evil, Lynch gave Strobel just a short time to memorize his speech on set before rolling. In this alternate version of events, "Mike" (not MIKE, thank you) is a person, not a spirit, who calls Cooper from the hospital: "It's a strange night," he hisses over the phone. "There's something in the air. Can you feel it? You know about Teresa Banks, pretty girl they found last year...I know the man who did her. I know about the stitches. With the red thread." Cooper meets Mike at the hospital and is told all about his strange relationship with Bob, who is in the basement of the hospital at this very moment. All of his dialogue from the dream sequence is featured; additionally, Mike explains that Bob "sometimes works among the infirm, the injured of the species. I was watching, Mr. Cooper, for over a year. Waiting for Bob to come out again." He identifies the sketch of the long-haired man as Bob, and later creeps downstairs as Cooper and Truman confront the self-confessed killer. When Bob swears, "I promise, I will kill again!" Mike shouts "Like hell!" and charges forward, firing a handgun several times at Bob's chest. After murdering his former partner, Mike himself collapses, randomly asking Cooper, "You got a nickel?" before dying at his feet. This bizarre non sequitur - in which Twin Peaks' underworld is presented as a vaguely psychosexual ritualistic criminal cult rather than an interdimensional spiritual realm - became, in many ways, the template for the entire Twin Peaks mythology (especially when you consider that the second half of the alternate ending was, virtually intact, the Red Room sequence which later became the bulk of Cooper's dream). Certainly it establishes the idea of the one-armed man being named Mike, hunting down Bob after being a former partner, and even suffering inexplicable, potentially deadly, seizures. It even plants some seeds that aren't picked up until Fire Walk With Me, including the link to Teresa and even "the red thread"...Lil the dancer's red dress is stitched with thread ("the tailored dress is code for drugs," Agent Chet Desmond will tell Agent Sam Stanley), and of course Gerard shouts at Leland that "the thread will be torn." This is a simple but still enigmatic beginning to a very complex character.


• A note on scene selection... Gerard/MIKE has so many good scenes that it was hard to choose just one. Going in, I assumed the climax of episode 13 would be my pick; I've long described it as my favorite non-Lynch-directed sequence, and Strobel's performance in this scene as possibly the best of any actor in the series. Yet the more I looked, the more I recognized its stiff competition. Hell, for any other character the motel room scene in episode 4 would be an easy selection - the fact that it may not even be Gerard's fourth-best scene speaks volumes about the fascination of this character, and perhaps especially the grandeur of Strobel's performance. In terms of character, Gerard's "coming out" as MIKE to the lawmen probably is his signature scene (which is why I chose episode 13 as Gerard's best episode), but two Lynch-directed moments, the ball-bouncing lineup at the Great Northern and the screeching confrontation in traffic, are astounding pieces of cacophonous cinema. They tell us in their own visceral way what episode 13 tells us through dialogue: what it's like to be inside poor Phillip Gerard's head, maybe especially when he himself is barely present.

• The footage from Gerard's traffic scene in Fire Walk With Me is split into two scenes; in the second, Laura is sitting on her bed, reflecting and she flashes back to close-up slow-motion shot of Gerard waving the Owl Cave ring.

• In capturing images for this post, I noticed how many times circles appear in conjunction with the character(s). Of course in his final scene, Gerard forms a circle with his thumb and forefinger and says, "Bob and I, when we were killing together, there was this perfect relationship: appetite, satisfaction, a golden circle!" This inspires Cooper to remember his ring that the Giant took several episodes earlier (and which he will return a few scenes later when Cooper remembers Laura's killer). In the film, of course, Gerard is one of the characters to wield the Owl Cave ring (and when he runs toward the train car, one shot catches him in the circular beam of a - physically impossible - flashlight). In his deleted scene from the film he lights a circle of candles (just like the one Bob appeared within in the alternate ending to the pilot which ties in with Glastonbury Grove in an interesting fashion). And of course Gerard sells Circle Brand Boots. Though this one may just be coincidence, Hawk also spies Gerard in a circular mirror at the hospital in episode 1.

• That particular scene unfolds differently in the episode 1 script. Instead of nonchalantly strolling toward a room as Hawk watches from afar, the mysterious "one-armed man" acts very sneaky. He retreats behind a corner when he notices Hawk and a trooper and hides in a stairwell, creeping away as Hawk looks for him.

• Episode 2 was scripted to include all the footage from the European ending, including the full dialogue of Mike as well as his death scene. That's why Cooper describes all these details in episode 3, which was shot before episode 2 (and hence before the MIKE/BOB portion of the dream sequence was whittled down to a few choice clips).

• In deleted dialogue from episode 4, Gerard tells us he was a "Smokey Mountain sales rep" when he lost his arm. He also gives us some more information on Bob Lydecker as well as himself: "Extremely dedicated. Has his own clinic about eight years now. No maybe seven. Let's see ...'81 ... I'm still at computer school ... yeah, it's eight years." Cooper follows up with, "In my dream he was a regular doctor." Though it's not much more, it does make me wonder if the writers were toying with eventually revealing "the other Bob" as a character. What would he look like? More to the point, why wouldn't he look like dream-BOB the way Phillip Michael Gerard looks like dream-MIKE? What is the nature of his relationship to Gerard; are they both hosts in this version - are either of them hosts? Did they have a secret history of killing together somehow related to the figures in Cooper's dream? In this light, the unseen but intriguing Bob Lydecker feels like the relic of an alternate, abandoned path for the character of Gerard. More on that momentarily.

• Gerard's dialogue in episode 8 is delivered as scripted, but an early draft interrupts him with a chatty mailman named Tom.

• In altered dialogue from episode 13, when asked where BOB comes from, instead of saying "That cannot be revealed," Gerard replies, "There are indications that we come from another world." I wonder if Lynch, who was obviously present on set for this scene as Gordon Cole, intervened to change just this one line?

• Gerard was scripted to be at Harold's house after his suicide in episode 14. Asked if BOB had been there, he responds, "BOB never lingers after death." Cooper stresses the past tense, and Gerard says BOB did not visit the house. He then wearily sits down and Cooper and Truman chat about how ill he looks, and whether or not it's a good idea to show the state troopers what he's doing. "It's not easy being 'Mike,'" Cooper states. Later in the episode script Hayward attends to a "weak and pale" Gerard, and warns the others that he needs to take his medication, but refuses. For some reason, even though the visit to the Great Northern is mentioned in the first scene, the actual visit is placed much later in the script, after clues are discovered in Laura's diary. (Maybe the copy available online is a composite of different drafts?)

• In episode 16, as scripted, Gerard tells Cooper, "Bob is a fire spirit. So are we both, both creatures of the fire." After he speaks his last line, the script reads, "Gerard goes slack in his arms. 'Mike' is gone. Cooper holds Gerard's limp body. He looks at Doc." This sounds a lot like he has died, which isn't exactly how it plays onscreen.

• In the Fire Walk With Me screenplay, Gerard says "Bob, I can hear you singing," as he hunts him through the woods. Most notably, as Laura is being killed, Gerard laughs and yells, "THAT'S HIS OWN DAUGHTER YOU'RE KILLING." In the Red Room, Leland sees Gerard retreating through the curtains just ahead of him. When he separates into Leland and BOB, Gerard and the Man From Another Place say in unison, "Bob, you're not going home without me."

• Gerard/MIKE is one of the few important characters never to appear in any Twin Peaks spin-off book - not even The Secret History (unless memory and a return skim have failed me) which devotes a small section to the Laura Palmer case near its end. He does have a Twin Peaks trading card which traces him back to Spokane and lists his accomplishments/strengths/weaknesses in that order: "I lived to tell about BOB."/"I can tolerate BOB."/"Without my drugs, I'm BOB's familiar." The series, on the contrary, tells us that BOB was MIKE's familiar - and familiars aren't mutual. More on that in a few weeks.

• I will mostly be dealing with the spirits of Twin Peaks in a single, massive entry devoted to them collectively, within which I'll dive into individual entities. MIKE presents a dilemma, however, and requires some discussion here. In that entry, I'm focusing almost exclusively on instances when the spirits appear in their own form...but what is MIKE's form? When we're introduced to the spirit for the first time on the show, in Cooper's dream, BOB appears as BOB not Leland, but MIKE appears as Phillip Gerard. This is extremely confusing, but there are some obvious practical explanations...

• When writing season one, Lynch and Frost had not yet settled on the course their mystery would take (although both claim they identified their killer early in the process, they don't seem to have charted out a resolution). The "supernatural" elements of season one are usually more psychic than anything else; it's possible the one-armed man was not supposed to have any actual relationship to the "MIKE" in Cooper's dream, any more than Maddy knows the "cousin...who looks almost exactly like Laura Palmer" or Jacques' curtains and spinning record connect in some supernatural way to the Red Room. Rather, Cooper is remaining receptive to the universe and allowing clues to arrive in a dream form which will guide him in the real world. In that sense, Gerard's role is finished when he tells Cooper about his veterinarian friend (conveniently named "Bob") who happens to treat Jacques Renault' pet bird and work next to a convenience store that sells the twine Laura Palmer was tied up with. There's no mention of drugs or blackouts; Gerard's middle name is"Michael" but the tattoo on his lost arm read "Mom" not "Fire walk with me." Maybe Gerard will be brought back in connection with Bob Lydecker, whom we never get to see (though Gerard's glance at the police sketch confirms that he doesn't look like the Bob from Cooper's dream). Or, more likely, Gerard has just served his plot purpose and now we can move on...

• Except, of course, he hasn't and we don't. Because Gerard does come back, and it turns out he does have a relationship to MIKE - and how! I highly suspect this notion of spiritual possession, at least as far as Gerard goes (Leland may be another story), was a season two development and not something planned all along (according to several accounts, Lynch and Frost didn't even expect to be picked up for season two). Bringing back a great actor and a cool character, who could also continue to draw upon that goldmine of a dream, makes a lot of sense. At this point though, as the Log Lady says, "complications arise." We've seen MIKE. We've seen Gerard. They look the same. If MIKE is an inhabiting spirit, and so is BOB why does the former appear in his host's body when the latter doesn't - indeed can't (the mystery would be spoiled if he did)? It smells a lot like a retcon that was never fully retconned. As such, we have to come up with explanations on our own. And I'll save those for the upcoming "Spirit World" omnibus entry in a few weeks. For now I'll let MIKE himself have the final words.

• Because I already have so much material to work with, so far I've mostly avoided opening up the can of worms that is the USC retrospective series (literally a dozen hours of interviews with more than thirty cast and crew members). However, one of Strobel's comments is so interesting I took the time to dig it up again (someone uploaded videos of the entire series and I organized them onto a playlist). In a session that also includes great stories from Mary Sweeney, who edited the killer's reveal episode, Tim Hunter, who directed Leland's death, and two propmen loaded with anecdotes (and some actual props), Strobel talks about how he conceptualized and played the Gerard/MIKE divide.

"I have come to the conclusion - it was never fully stated - that there is an alternate universe where...some of the people who've studied physics know about string theory, some of these ideas that in fact we can see maybe five percent of what exists in the universe. We co-exist with so many other things and so many entities that are out there that sometimes they come into our world and sometimes they go [indistinguishable]. And I think that David was trying to get that. He meditates a lot, he's a great promoter of meditation and I hope everybody does. When you do that, you do put your mind into an alternate space other than the one that you're sitting in right now and I really think that my character and Leland and BOB, and I had my doppelganger sort of in Michael J. Anderson [who plays the little Man From Another Place] ... and the introduction of our almost otherworldly characters into the whole plot situation reflects the thinking that there is more out there than we can see."

The propman, sitting next to him, starts nodding and comments that on the set of Fire Walk With Me, Lynch actually used those words: "Jeff, it's an alternate universe. Just think of it that way."

• Strobel is quoted in Greg Olson's Lynch biography Beautiful Dark (slightly cleaning up a passage from an interview on the Fire Walk With Me DVD): "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is hard to look at if you're not prepared to look at a work of art. It's like going to a gallery and seeing extremely expressionistic paintings when you were expecting English landscapes. This was more a piece of art than a movie. The juxtaposition of horror and beauty has an elevating sense that brings out things in your mind and in your heart and in your soul like a very fine piece of art does. The critics didn't see that, and that makes me angry."


SHOWTIME: Yes, Strobel is on the cast list for 2017. No huge surprise here, as Lynch loves the character and the actor; Strobel himself has often stated that the only person he would come out of retirement for is Lynch. And yet in a way it is unusual, because both his Arm and his opponent won't be present. Will Strobel play Gerard or MIKE under Lynch's watch? (He's only played the former for less than a minute of Lynch screentime - a few seconds in the pilot, when the character wasn't even defined yet, and that very short scene in the season two premiere where supposedly straight-up Gerard seems about as cracked as the demon possessing him...I love how that blurry close-up of his grin anticipates the old couple in Mulholland Drive eleven years later.) Will the lines between the two worlds be blurred? Will we see him in the Red Room, Twin Peaks, or someplace new? I would love to find out more about his strange history, but something tells me we'll leave the upcoming series with even more questions about the mysterious one-armed man than we had going in.

Yesterday morning, due to a scheduling mishap, this entry went up "empty," bumping the actual entry for Phillip Gerard. I fixed the problem within a few hours, but today this goes up with a delay, the longest and hopefully last delay of the series. At least I still made it up on the correct day! Apologies for the confusion.

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.

Eileen is a bedrock of attentive comfort in Twin Peaks, until even she is revealed to be hiding something.


Friday, February 17, 1989
Eileen Hayward guides her wheelchair into the family living room, a plate of muffins on her lap. Pulling up next to the couch she presents the snacks to her teenage daughter Donna and Donna's best friend Laura Palmer, who seems unhappy. Eileen's husband, Dr. William "Doc" Hayward, fumbles with a prescription before Donna whispers something in his ear. Then he smiles and says the paper actually holds a secret message for Laura: "The angels have returned, and when you see the one that's meant to help you, you will weep with joy." Laura is quite moved by this message and Eileen smiles warmly at the happy scene. They are interrupted when Laura's father calls the house, telling her to come back for dinner, and Laura is sullen again as she kisses the Haywards goodbye. When she and Donna depart the room, Eileen and Doc are left alone. They exchange knowing looks, and a distinct atmosphere of sorrow fills the space between them.

Friday, February 24, 1989
A week later, Eileen and Doc sit across from one another in front of the fireplace, holding hands and looking into one another's eyes. Doc describes a difficult day spent with the Palmers, who are grieving the loss of Laura that morning. She was brutally murdered, and while Doc can't share too much information he does tell Eileen that the police found a video of Laura and Donna dancing at a picnic; it is unknown who took the video.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
The following morning/early afternoon, Donna finally wakes up and comes downstairs. Last night she snuck out past curfew, was discovered by the police, and is not wanted for questioning. However, Eileen tells her that the sheriff called and rescheduled their interview for the following morning. Donna explains her confused feelings: she is obviously grieving her best friend, but she's also realized she is in love with Laura's secret boyfriend James Hurley. "It's like I'm having the most beautiful dream and the most terrible nightmare all at once," Donna offers as her mother comforts her. That evening, Donna brings James over to meet the parents. Although the boy is polite, their conversation is stilted and both Doc and Eileen seem a tad uncomfortable when they say goodnight to James and leave him on the couch with their daughter.

Sunday, February 26, 1989
After church, the Haywards head to the RR Diner. There Eileen spots her daughter's classmate Audrey Horne, who was also at church, inserting some coins in the jukebox. Donna excuses herself and a few minutes later Eileen looks up in disbelief to see Audrey swaying languidly in the middle of the diner, eyes closed, palms spread. Eileen nods toward the strange sight, and her husband turns around to witness the commotion.

Friday, March 3, 1989
The following weekend, the Haywards welcome the Palmers into their home for a semi-formal gathering, "the Hayward Supper Club." Eileen announces that "Gersten has some very good news and we're all very proud of her," and with that the youngest Hayward, dressed as a fairy princess for a school play, announces her scholastic and extracurricular accomplishments and sits at the piano to play classical music as an accompaniment for the evening's festivities. Harriet, Eileen's middle daughter, dedicates a poem to Laura and hugs the Palmers. Dinner is served, Gersten keeps playing, and Eileen listens as Leland explains how his mood has lifted since his hair turned white overnight. Sarah shoots Eileen a few weary looks. Leland then leaps from his seat, declares that he feels like singing and, as Gersten hammers away at the piano, Eileen watches this old family friend launch into a manic version of "Get Happy," until he collapses to the floor and must be revived by Doc.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
A dozen days later, Leland has died. Eileen attempts to soothe a grieving Sarah at his wake. She recalls how the community came together for her own mother's funeral - "There must have been a hundred people." And she listens sympathetically as Sarah recalls a tender moment between Donna and Laura, how they gathered together one night at a sleepover and vowed they would be best friends forever. "I think it was a kind of bond against..." Sarah can't quite finish the sentence, so Eileen does for her: "...death." Sarah trembles and insists that she wants to remember everything.

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
A week later, as spring dawns on Twin Peaks, Doc and Eileen return home from a shopping trip (Eileen even carries flowers in her lap). Donna greets them, smiling and drinking a Coke, and casually mentions that an old friend of Doc's dropped by for a visit. Gerald Craig, a colleague from medical school, chatted with Donna on his way to a conference in Spokane. Doc and Eileen both look concerned: Gerald died years ago in a rafting accident. When Eileen tries the phone number he left behind, she reaches a cemetery. Doc warns Donna this man is dangerous and she must not let him in if he returns. Later, another man appears at the Hayward door but Eileen recognizes this one. Ben Horne, the wealthiest man in town and owner of the Great Northern Hotel, takes her hand and whispers in her ear without fully entering the house.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
The next morning, Eileen visits the Great Northern. Ben meets her in the hallway and then rolls her into his office. There they discuss the past in vague terms; Eileen insists "she must never know" and tries to return letters from Ben after holding them for twenty years. She asks why he is "ripping apart old wounds" now and he insists that he is trying to become a better person, but he quickly lapses into longing caresses: "You should have been the best thing that ever happened to me. I haven't held you since that night." She shoves him off and insists that he stay away from her family.

Friday, March 24, 1989
At dinner, Donna is cold and biting toward her parents: she knows something is going on between Ben and Eileen, but both Hayward parents avoid her questions and claim that Ben is helping out with a charity. Donna says she's going to enter the Miss Twin Peaks contest and hopes she can travel far away with the scholarship money if she wins. Eileen is upset by Donna's vitriol.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
Eileen receives a phone call from Deputy Hawk Hill, who says he urgently needs to speak with Donna. Eileen can't find her daughter and shouts around the house until she hears her response from another room.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Eileen and Doc are excited to see their daughter all dressed up for the Miss Twin Peaks event that evening; Eileen asks her to share her speech. But Donna can't be swayed from her mission - she asks one more time for the truth about Ben. When Eileen refuses ("You're young, you don't know the limitations"), a furious Donna warns them that whatever happens is their own fault. That night, Eileen and Ben, intruding on the Haywards once again, watch as Donna comes downstairs with a suitcase. Donna weeps: "Who are my real parents anyway?" Downcast, Eileen tries to reach her but is mostly limited to observing the situation as it unravels even further. Doc arrives home, holds Donna in his arms, yells at Ben, and finally attacks him, slamming his head into the fireplace and knocking him to the ground with a bloody gash in his head. Eileen rolls her chair forward into the living room along with her daughter and Ben's wife, all watching helplessly as the violence foreshadowed a month earlier, in this very room, finally bursts forth.

Now that we are inside the top forty, more than halfway through the series, allow me to pause before diving directly into Eileen's own experiences. So far, our exploration of Twin Peaks divides neatly into several spheres, with characters tending to exist mostly inside one or another. There's the social Twin Peaks, exemplified by the Great Northern or the diner (both briefly visited by Eileen, yielding strange encounters with the Horne family). These are public, shared spaces where relationships overlap and secrets usually remain hidden. The procedural Twin Peaks, centered around the sheriff's station but branching off into various crime scenes or suspects' homes, yields the more worldly of these secrets. Meanwhile the spiritual Twin Peaks, rising to prominence with our recent entry on Gerard, hangs on to most of the deeper mysteries. Then there's the natural Twin Peaks - the most iconic vision of the town with its trees, mountains, and meadows. Although, to be honest, we haven't seen too much of this yet, perhaps because its presence on the show derives mostly from establishing shots and moody segues, with the bulk of the series shot on sets. Finally, and this brings us to Eileen, we have the domestic Twin Peaks.

The home presents itself as the most protected arena, offering escape from the exhausting bustle of the public, the tough confrontations of the law, the harrowing visions of the spiritual, and the inhuman grandeur of nature. For David Lynch, however, the home is both a cozy refuge (he compares it to a nest that can become claustrophobic) and - more deeply - "a place where things can go wrong." And do they ever in Twin Peaks. Like so many Twin Peaks mothers/wives - Mrs. Horne, Mrs. Briggs, Mrs. Palmer - Mrs. Hayward stays at home while a husband engages professionally with the town's mysteries and an adolescent child discovers excitement and heartbreak in the wider world. In Eileen's particular case, a physical disability further limits her mobility. Yet Eileen is ultimately more active and involved than those first two figures, and even to an extent more so than Sarah. This will be explained below, in the "journey" section; Eileen demonstrates, in a way few previous entries have, how Twin Peaks' characters become enveloped in traumatic themes initially witnessed from afar.

Eileen's character study provides our first major gateway into the Hayward household. This is an important, hugely underrated location in the Twin Peaks mythos. It's the place the Palmer household should have been, a warm family environment where the sorrows of the town can brew and produce a more bittersweet flavor. This is where Doc can relax and meditate on a traumatic day, where Donna attempts to digest her complicated emotions, where Donna and James try to forge an innocent romance from the ashes of violent tragedy, where Laura is poignantly memorialized, where the Palmers try to rejoin the community, and finally where Leland's horrific revelation is transmuted into a calm, respectable gathering of the townspeople. And of course, both before and after these memorable moments, the Hayward home is where Laura's story most effectively joins up with the the larger communal narrative, in a scene excised from Fire Walk With Me which nonetheless beats like the hidden heart of the entire Twin Peaks story. Eileen is present for all of these scenes, an often silent presence guiding her guests into a place of wistful peace through both reflection and escape.

However, there are also more troubling scenes in the Hayward house when Eileen isn't present. These range from relatively mild rebellion/experimentation - Donna chatting about sex with Laura, sneaking out a window, or necking (and possibly more) with her new boyfriend - to far more dangerous events (two invasions, Windom Earle and BOB, one physical but superficially benign, the other mental but viscerally terrifying). Eventually, even when Eileen is there to protect it, the Hayward household cannot weather Twin Peaks' storm; indeed, Eileen herself is at the center of the turmoil that eventually engulfs the family. Tellingly, this descent into anxiety doesn't derive from an unexpected assault on domestic bliss, but a long-brewing secret, hidden within the walls of the home itself. Perhaps no characters in Twin Peaks better represent Twin Peaks' attitude toward the domestic than the happy, healthy, yet ultimately vulnerable Hayward clan.

As with several recent characters, Eileen's involvement with the series neatly splits into two halves. Like Lana, she is more passive in the first half, more active in the second, although unlike Lana she not the center of drama in her earlier scenes. Whether one starts with the pilot or The Missing Pieces, Eileen and her home exist as a refuge, for Laura, Doc, Donna, and the Palmers. She speaks softly, smiles wanly, watches as others sing, dance, or collapse around her. This thread isn't really about progression, but if it has a climax, that moment arrives at Leland's wake when Eileen takes it upon herself to share and soothe Sarah's pain. This is even more evident in the larger context of the scene; most of the townspeople don't discuss Leland at all and are caught up in their own personal dramas or comedies. When Sarah says, "I want to remember all of this," it's like a passing of the torch (especially since Sarah herself essentially disappears from the series at this exact moment).

The next time we see Eileen, her home is transforming into a locus of danger rather than an escape from it. Windom Earle's disguised visit to Donna (posing as Doc Hayward's old buddy), which can look like a non sequitur in Twin Peaks' big picture, emerges as a potent transitional point when we focus on Eileen's arc. The existential terror of a dead man visiting their home (the phone call to the cemetery is an especially deft touch) provides the perfect pretext for Ben's return into Eileen's lives and the more earthbound turmoil it will produce. From now on, every time we see Eileen she is dealing with that storyline and its implications. This arc unravels everything that was initially established: Eileen's close, honest relationship with Donna splinters into acrimony and distrust; the loving Hayward marriage is unveiled as a sad mutual pact of denial; Eileen herself, the glue that holds them all together, is used as a wedge to drive them all apart.

There is poetic symmetry too in the Hayward melodrama's echoes of the Palmer tragedy. Eileen stands to lose her own daughter just as she watched the Palmers lose theirs, to a self-conscious rejection rather than murder. Her husband violently attacks someone else, possibly killing them in a similar fashion to how Leland killed Maddy (smashed into the wall, falling backward on the floor with a massive head wound). The loving mother carries guilty secrets which strain her relationship to Donna and while initially the threat to their home is presented as an almost uncanny intruder (BOB for the Palmers, Windom for the Haywards), eventually the source of this threat is presented as much within as without. Eileen Hayward experiences all the tensions of Twin Peaks in that very first (or last) scene with Laura, and they haunt her entire journey from beginning to circular end.

If the above face looks familiar (and the name itself wasn't already a clue), that's because Deschanel is the mother of Zooey and Emily, popular film/TV actresses and current leads on New Girl and Bones, respectively. She is also married to Caleb Deschanel, an accomplished cinematographer and director (who worked on Twin Peaks). Before she was a Deschanel, her name was Mary Jo Kennedy and she popped up in guest spots on late sixties television shows. After more than a decade without screen work (either spent on the stage or away from acting altogether - I can't determine), the-now-Deschanel landed the prominent role of John Glenn's wife in The Right Stuff, shot by her husband. She acted sporadically in television throughout the eighties and nineties, returning to the big screen after seventeen years as the mother-in-law of Heath Ledger's wife in the highly revisionist Revolutionary War action film The Patriot (starring Mel Gibson). Since then she has mixed TV and film roles, although more recently she has focused on theater. In 2014, she showed up on the red carpet for the premiere of The Missing Pieces, sharing her reflections on the show in a video interview. (personal photo pictured, circa 1960s - shared online by her daughter)




Eileen was written by Mark Frost and David Lynch three times, with Mark Frost going on to pen one solo script, one collaboration with Harley Peyton, and one collaboration with both Harley Peyton and Robert Engels. Harley Peyton and Robert Engels collaborated on two of her other scripts, Barry Pullman wrote two, and Tricia Brock wrote one. David Lynch and Robert Engels co-wrote her deleted scene from Fire Walk With Me. Eileen was directed by David Lynch for the film and in five episodes - tying the Log Lady's record for most Lynch-directed episodes so far. She was also well as Duwayne Dunham (twice), Tina Rathborne, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, Stephen Gyllenhaal (in a voice-only performance), and Tim Hunter. Unfortunately, her husband Caleb Deschanel directed several hours of Twin Peaks, but was never able to work with her!

Eileen is onscreen for roughly twenty-three minutes (including her presence in stretches where her activity or even appearance are limited). She is in sixteen scenes in eleven episodes (plus the deleted scenes collection from the feature film), taking place over five weeks. She's featured the most in episode 8, the Hayward Supper Club. Her primary location is the Hayward home (only two scenes take place outside of there). She shares the most screentime with Donna. Eileen is the last character in this series to never place in the top ten of any episode.




Episode 25: When Donna arrives at the Great Northern, she looks for Audrey. After revealing that Audrey's father is talking to her mother, Donna gets Audrey to help her spy on them through a secret passage. They miss most of the conversation but overhear the last bit about "not telling her." Later, Donna asks her father about Ben's relationship with Eileen; this is the first time she brings it up and the midst of Doc's smooth denials, a messenger arrives at the door with a mysterious bouquet of flowers for Eileen.

Episode 27: When Eileen receives the phone call from Hawk, Donna is upstairs looking through old photo albums. She finds a birth certificate with her mother's name but not her father's as well as old snapshots from the seventies of Eileen, Doc, and Ben partying together. During a routine checkup at the Great Northern, Doc tells Ben to "stay away from Eileen."

Episode 28: Backstage at the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, Donna confronts Ben. She lists all the evidence she's discovered and asks him what's going on. Before he can finish his sentence ("Donna, your mother and I...") she interrupts with the obvious conclusion, "Oh God. You're my father," and runs away from him.


• Eileen is mentioned just a few times in Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, most memorably when she teases Laura about sleepwalking and mistaking a stove for a washing machine.

• In deleted dialogue from episode 1, Donna and Eileen air some suspicions about Bobby ("I've been waiting for something like this about Bobby," Eileen confesses, and Donna says she and Laura made a pact to get away from both Bobby and Mike).

• The diner scene is not in the script for episode 2. Instead the Haywards are leaving church when they run into Audrey. Doc is pushing Eileen toward a handicapped ramp, and they invite Audrey to have a Softie Freeze with them.

• The "Hayward Supper Club" doesn't really exist in episode 8. We enter the scene after dinner as Eileen promises Leland a good dessert and then moves to the kitchen with Sarah to do the dishes. When they return, they witness Leland's impromptu song (Sarah accompanies him at the piano; only the adults are present in this version of the scene).

• The episode 17 script makes it clear that the night Laura made her pact with Donna was actually the night of Eileen's mother's funeral ("Eileen reacts - feeling bad for bringing this up.")

• A deleted passage from episode 24 also links two separate moments: the Windom Earle discovery and Ben's visit are continuous. Eileen has just sent Donna upstairs for her father's yearbook when Ben arrives. This underscores the connection between the two scenes even more.

• The episode 25 script features a deleted shot of Eileen disembarking from a van with a ramp at the Great Northern.

• The Haywards attend Twin Peaks Episcopal Church, in case you were wondering. This is revealed by the Access Guide, which also lists the Hornes as members of the congregation (nicely linking up to episode 2). Confusingly, their pastor is the same Rev. Clarence Brocklehurst who presided over Laura's funeral, despite the fact that the Palmers are Lutherans. (We're really in the weeds now.)

• If you look closely, Eileen has three slightly different wheelchairs - with different colors and sizes of stripe under the armrests: one with a thick blue stripe in The Missing Pieces, one with a small, straight red stripe in the pilot, and one with a colorful white/orange/yellow diagonal stripe (alongside some stickers) for all of the regular episodes of the series.

• The cause of Eileen's disability is never revealed. In the old photos she appears to be standing up, so her condition apparently wasn't lifelong. Deschanel has expressed curiosity about her character's past (though I can't find the anecdote at present and have no idea why she considered this a possibility, Deschanel once pondered whether Eileen had a psychological, rather than physical, dependency on the wheelchair). Deschanel pressed Lynch and Frost for answers which, of course, they declined to provide! There were intimations, however, that all would eventually be revealed...needless to say, the show's fate determined otherwise.


SHOWTIME: No, Deschanel is not on the cast list for 2017. It's uncertain if we'll hear anything more about her character's past, either the injury/illness the actress wondered about or, more pertinent to the storyline of Twin Peaks, the nature of her relationship with Ben. Considering Ben's own propensities, and the consistency of sexual violence on the show, there has been speculation that Ben raped Eileen; some have also wondered whether the secret has anything to do with Donna's parentage, since it's never stated, only presumed. This storyline is often dismissed, but given its thematic relevance and the cliffhanger of its "ending," I personally would like to get some sense - even if it's vague - of where things went afterwards. The Haywards look to be a very poignant clan in the coming series. More than half of them, including the Hayward who was one of the stars of the show, won't be present. Did Eileen pass away? Did she and Doc separate? The Haywards were the most settled family on Twin Peaks for a long time, and now they are the ones whose fate I wonder about the most.

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.

Jack's smooth confidence wins over two Hornes although it's not entirely clear if he's actually done anything to earn their enthusiasm.


Tuesday, March 21, 1989
John Justice Wheeler, suave international businessman with a rustic fashion sense, approaches the concierge's desk at the Great Northern Hotel. He has arrived back in his hometown of Twin Peaks to help out his mentor, Benjamin Horne (owner of the hotel), who is running into trouble with a big real estate deal. The concierge, whose nametag reads "Audrey," is grouchy and uncooperative and Jack (as he prefers to be called) almost leaves her behind before realizing she's the boss' daughter. He reminds the young Miss Horne that he saw her performing Heidi eight years ago, when she was ten. Later he joins Audrey, Ben, Ben's brother Jerry, and "Bob Briggs," Ben's executive assistant, for a business meeting. Ben proposes a savvy conservationist strategy to salvage the Ghostwood development that his rival Catherine Martell scooped of from under him. An environmental impact report has revealed that the rare pine weasel could be eliminated from the area if Ghostwood goes forward. It's unclear to what extent this is a purely cynical PR stunt, an attempt to incorporate Jack's own environmentalist interests, or a genuine gesture of goodwill on the part of Ben, who claims he is trying to turn over a new leaf. At any rate, Jack seems more interested in Audrey than the pine weasel. That night he has dinner with Ben and Audrey, and Ben must excuse himself to rescue Jerry (who has frustrated the chef so greatly that his life is in danger). With Ben gone, Jack receives the brunt of Audrey's irritation - she thinks his attempt to "save" her family business is arrogant - but he begins to win her over with his worldly romanticism ("I tell you it's glorious out there, Audrey") and his frank pushback: "You don't like me very much, do you?"

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
The next morning both Jack and Audrey are apologetic about their dinner conversation. Jack invites her on a picnic. At the picnic, he serenades her and she confesses that no one sang to her before. She is romantically inexperienced and acknowledges, "There was someone but not anymore. There's no one." Jack seems encouraged. That evening, when she falls off the stage of the disastrous Save Ghostwood Fashion Show (a live pine weasel has escaped into the crowd), Jack is there to catch her. As he holds her in his arms, they kiss.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
Audrey announces herself as "room service" while Jack experiments with a strange steam device in his room. He gets annoyed with Audrey's teasing manner and informs her that she should follow her grandfather's advice: "If you're gonna bring a hammer, better bring nails." Audrey doesn't like his forthright manner and especially disdains his assumptions that she isn't "being herself." Jack apologizes and invites her for a sunset flight in his private jet. Audrey agrees; unfortunately Ben has other ideas and sends her off on a two-night trip to Seattle so she can help coordinate a national campaign to "Save the Pine Weasel." Audrey can't say no, and Jack is left stymied, realizing just how much he likes Audrey as she disappears for a couple days. Ben presses him for advice on how to be "good" - Jack tells him to be honest and then, following his own advice, admits that he's in love with Audrey. Ben is surprised but enthusiastic, sharing a carrot in lieu of a cigar.

Friday, March 24, 1989
Jack takes a seat by the fireplace at the Great Northern (where he seems to have spent almost all his time in Twin Peaks), and blurts out to a complete stranger: "Love is hell." What follows is a heart-to-heart with a hotel guest who shares Jack's same affliction: a burning romance that feels both painful and completely necessary. The newfound friends toast one another, but their camaraderie is interrupted by a telegram. An alarmed Jack must step away; he tells the hotel employee to arrange for his checkout the following morning and shakes his companion's hand, wishing him luck.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
Jack ask Randy, the desk clerk, if Audrey has returned...no luck. He visits Ben in his office, quickly greeting an equally distracted Doc Hayward, and tells his mentor the bad news: he must fly back to South America because his business partner and close friend has been murdered. Ben is distressed - "damn this rainforest business anyway" - but Jack needs to take his courageous friend's place. Jack tries to buck up Ben's confidence and leaves a letter for him to give Audrey. He looks around one last time before leaving and even casts a glance at the runway as his jet gets ready to take off. Fortunately, Audrey arrives at the last minute, running out on the small airfield and waving him down. Jack grins and offers his farewell and Audrey blurts out, "I'm a virgin!" Clarifying that admission, she asks Jack to make love to her. "Right now?" he chuckles. "Well, it is your jet," Audrey reminds him. "Thank God for that," he says, and welcomes her aboard.

Jack's arrival serves two functions: to reinforce Ben's ambiguous conversion to "goodness" and, primarily of course, to finally give Audrey a love interest after certain real-world concerns intervened in the planned fictional narrative. Like Sternwood, Jack is an quasi-outsider (though his roots are in Twin Peaks) who affects a western/cowboy style, reinforcing the town's frontier vibe without fully belonging to it himself. Even as he conveys an all-American vibe (he even sings a classic campfire ballad), Jack arrives in the midst of a lot of other outside characters - Windom Earle, Thomas Eckhardt, Annie Blackburn (who, like him, straddles the line between local and foreigner) - and he makes much of his globetrotting persona. He sticks mostly to the Great Northern, but his few excursions, especially the picnic, provide some nice exterior footage. Jack's most problematic attribute is, frankly, his conventionality. He is a thoroughly expected romantic lead, and as such he reinforces the idea that Twin Peaks, for all its quirks, is an ordinary TV show, unafraid to follow formula in order to hit its story beats. The first time I watched the series, I kept expecting a mind-bending twist. Was Jack a sinister double agent? Was he an ally of Windom Earle? Did he have dangerous intentions for Audrey? Nope, he's just a serviceable love interest played by a popular young actor of the town, swooping in to deflower Audrey and depart like Poochie on The Itchy and Scratchy Show ("Poochie died on the way back to his home planet" - unfortunately I can't claim credit for this observation).

Well, I don't think Jack really has much of an arc in this romance. I guess he's slightly humbled by Audrey's ability to win him over, but it feels like he's in charge for most of the romance (and his mature sense of authority makes it a little odd that "Cooper's too old for Audrey" was the objection to their romance; to add another level of irony, of course, the actress was actually a year older than the actor). To the extent he develops over his four episodes, it's a combination of falling for Audrey and discovering that his partner has died; both events demonstrate the vulnerability of a character who introduces himself as the dashing, unflappable type. But trying to eke a deep character out of this plot contrivance is a stretch so I'll use this space to expand on another topic: Billy Zane's performance. It's both the most annoying and the most accomplished part of the John Justice Wheeler phenomenon. On the one hand, Zane's offhand, mumbling delivery can be grating (there are three or four lines I can't make heads or tails of after multiple viewings); his naturalistic affectation seems all the more silly given the triviality of this character...this isn't exactly Terry Malloy he's playing (indeed, if we're being generous, Jack is much closer to a classic Clark Gable archetype). There's a deliberate smugness to the whole endeavor that only rubs Jack's uselessness in more. On the other hand...Zane does have some charm, and if the character is fairly useless at least his easygoing persona lends him a pleasant sheen. Given the fairly flat material, Zane's nonchalant style may be the best possible approach to the material, helping it go down smoothly even as we roll our eyes.

Zane was one of the casting surprises when I watched Twin Peaks in 2008. Many of the actors on the show were unknown to me - though Sherilyn Fenn, Madchen Amick, and Sheryl Lee should have achieved stardom (and have plenty of work to be proud of in any event), their fame remains mostly tied to Twin Peaks. Zane, like Heather Graham (who shows up around the same time), was a very familiar nineties face whom I hadn't expected to see in town. Zane got his start in the eighties as one of Biff's henchmen in a couple Back to the Future movies but his big breakthrough was as a psychopath in Dead Calm (based on a novel which inspired one of Orson Welles' many uncompleted films). For a time in the nineties, Zane hovered on the brink of becoming a mainstream leading man, but ultimately he may have been a bit too archetypally slick and good-looking. In an era given to irony and offbeat indie cred, Zane found himself best employed as a villain or eccentric. Even his one attempt to be a superhero, The Phantom, was an unconventional thirties pop culture choice (a bit like another nineties flop, Alec Baldwin's The Shadow). I actually never saw the film, but still have a few trading cards hanging around my childhood home. Zane's massive blockbuster arrived the following year, though he was the antagonist instead of the hero: he was perfectly cast as the priggish snob Cal Hockley in Titanic. Much has been made of the fact that David Warner, Twin Peaks' Thomas Eckhardt, plays Zane's butler and the film includes a line lifted straight from Twin Peaks: "I'd rather be his whore than your wife!" (from the episode that introduces Zane to boot). Zane has kept busy over the past thirty years, with seven films in various stages of production at the moment. (film pictured: tie-in advertisement for The Phantom, 1996)



Jack is written in solo scripts by Tricia Brock and Barry Pullman, two collaborations between Harley Peyton and Robert Engles, and one collaboration between Mark Frost and Peyton. He is directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, James Foley, Duwayne Dunham, Jonathan Sanger, and Stephen Gyllenhaal.

Jack is onscreen for roughly twenty-three minutes. He is in fifteen scenes in five episodes, taking place over five consecutive days. He's featured the most in episode 23, when he arrives in Twin Peaks. His primary location is the Great Northern. He shares the most screentime with Audrey. He is one of the top three characters in episode 23 - in fact, he is one of only four or five characters to have more episodic screentime than Cooper in the entire series (although it should be noted this includes time where he's present for the action but we don't see his face). He is also one of the top ten characters in episodes 25 and 27.




• In some deleted dialogue from episode 23, Jack exhibits his idealistic (or, alternatively, conveniently glib) interpretation of Ben's talking points: "What Ben's talking about is quality of life, something we don't consider much in the business world. It's my experience that a corporation like Horne Industries is not just a vehicle for making money, but for expressing values too." Jack's later deleted dialogue (from the dinner with Audrey) is a bit more interesting, fleshing out the performance of Heidi he nostalgically recalled in an earlier scene:

"Somehow, Ben convinced Pete Martell to play the Goat. He had these horns on, and you know Pete, he'd bleat and baah to wake the dead, loud enough that we couldn't hear poor Heidi's lines. So you kicked him. Hard. Right where he lives, as I recall ... Pete started yowling even louder, for real this time, and precious, innocent little Heidi turned to the audience, pigtails and deep dark eyes...and smiled. Ten years old and you made it very clear: don't tread on me. 

• In deleted dialogue from episode 24, Jack rhapsodizes about his flight to Twin Peaks: "Flying out here, I took a big northern swing. It's beautiful. The air and light up toward the pole is like nothing you've ever seen. You sort of float while the earth turns underneath. And the northern light gets trapped on the horizon, in this bright blue band. Frozen light. Frozen color."

• In a deleted scene referenced in the Tim Pinkle entry, Jack is driven to the airfield by Tim and Tom's Taxi-Dermy, brothers who both stuff animals and drive cabs - and the brother who drives is blind.

• There isn't enough material to justify an "Offscreen" section but Jack comes up a couple times after his character departs. First when Pete (who drove Audrey to the airfield) sees the plane depart and then Audrey appears beside his side, remarking, "What a gyp. I finally meet the man of my dreams and the next thing you know he's flying to Brazil." Pete assures her that Jack will return. In the following episode, Ben tries to comfort a forlorn Audrey. She remarks, in an (I think) unintended double entendre, "I hope it doesn't hurt this much in a week." Ben assures her that Jack is a man of his word, and will return.


SHOWTIME: No, Zane is not on the cast list for 2017. So apparently Jack is not a man of his word. Or else he met the same fate as his former partner (and Poochie, for that matter). Did he leave behind any legacy? There's been speculation that perhaps Audrey will have a twentysomething child; but how would any potential pregnancy have been affected by the bank explosion that, according to Mark Frost's book, sent her into a coma? Jack's South American adventures may present a possible venue for material given Phillip Jeffries' experiences in nearby Argentina; on the other hand, the character may ultimately turn out to be a grand non sequitur.

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.

Harding of hearing but tuned in to subterranean frequencies, Gordon relishes the confusion and surprise of everyday reality.


Friday, February 12, 1988
"GET ME AGENT CHESTER DESMOND OUT IN FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA!" shouts FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole. With his pompadour, black suit, and tentacle-like hearing aids poking out of each ear,  he looks like a character from a comic book. As he stands in profile against a flat "natural" backdrop with his mouth wide open, we might almost expect a speech balloon to emerge from his mouth. Instead a silent brunette assistant exits the room and connects him with Agent Desmond, before another silent assistant, this time a blonde, offers him a mug of coffee while he shouts over the phone (Gordon's hearing loss makes it difficult for him to gauge the volume of his own voice). Gordon orders Desmond to meet him at a private airfield near Portland, Oregon, where they will discuss the recent murder of a seventeen-year-old girl, Teresa Banks. At the airfield Gordon introduces Desmond to Agent Sam Stanley, who "cracked the Whitman case," and then introduces both of them to Lil, "MY MOTHER'S SISTER GIRL," dressed in a bright red dress adorned with a blue rose. Desmond mutters, "Federal" and Gordon nods and places his hand, fingers outspread, over his face with a solemn expression. Lil, herself made up in cartoonish fashion and clad in a bright red wig, sashays on the tarmac, making curious gestures and squinching her face. Desmond seems to understand while Stanley is confused, and then Gordon sends them both off to the town of Deer Meadow. He advises them that he'll be returning to the Philadelphia office shortly if they want to reach him.

Tuesday, February 16, 1988
In Philadelphia, Agent Dale Cooper enters Gordon's office and crouches in front of his desk. Looking very concerned, he warns Gordon that it's 10:10 am on February 16, and he's worried about today because of a dream he already told him about. A few minutes later (or so it seems - or is the dream itself unfolding?) Gordon is in his office with Albert Rosenfield, a sardonic fellow agent. A dazed, stumbling figure in a white leisure suit wanders into the room and Gordon immediately recognizes him as "THE LONG-LOST PHILLIP JEFFRIES," an agent who disappeared in the field years ago. Jeffries can only babble about a "room above a convenience store" while refusing to talk about Judy (whom he nonetheless keeps mentioning). Gordon sits Jeffries down and sends the skeptical Albert out of the room while trying to reach the front desk. The lights begin flashing on and off, Cooper leaves, and a frustrated Gordon - who can't seem to connect with anyone via the speakerphone, shouts "WHAT, AM I ALONE IN HERE?" He looks around again and...he is. Jeffries is gone. Albert reaches the front desk and informs Gordon that Jeffries never checked in or, as Albert puts it, "he was never here." He also reports "news from Deer Meadow - Agent Chester Desmond has disappeared." Gordon and Cooper check the surveillance tapes and see that, sure enough, Jeffries disembarked an elevator and walked through their corridor. "BUT WHERE DID HE GO?" Gordon wonders. "AND WHERE IS CHESTER DESMOND?"

Tuesday, February 28, 1989
A year later, Gordon calls Cooper via a secure line at the Twin Peaks sheriff's station, where he is investigating the murder of another teenage girl, likely related to the one in Deer Meadow. Gordon reports Albert's findings in the Laura Palmer case, revealing the brand of twine that bound her hands, identifying bird bites on her shoulders, and awaiting an analysis of a plastic fragment found in her stomach during the autopsy. But Albert's been up to something else too: he has registered a formal complaint about the local sheriff, who punched him in the face during his visit. Cooper defends the sheriff, telling Gordon to "file it under 'F' for 'Forget it,'" and insisting that Albert was at fault. That evening, Gordon calls in again, declaring that the bird bites have been identified as those of a myna or parrot, and that Albert is faxing over a reconstruction of the plastic object.

Wednesday, March 8, 1989
A week later, Gordon himself arrives in Twin Peaks, meeting Sheriff Harry Truman. He informs him that he's Cooper's supervisor and comes bearing a series of valuable updates. Albert has identified fibers from the area where Cooper was (not fatally) shot as belonging to a Vicuna coat ("The coat was Vicuna," Truman repeats, to which Gordon responds, "SOUNDS REAL GOOD, SHERIFF, BUT I ALREADY ATE"). A lab report has established that the mysterious one-armed man (whom the department is currently looking for) had a powerful cocktail of drugs mixed in his abandoned syringe. And the torn pages from the crime scene belong to a diary. As Truman digests this information, they are interrupted by Deputy Hawk Hill escorting a distressed one-armed man, Phillip Gerard. "THERE'S THE ONE-ARMER NOW!" Cole declares, pointing at the unhappy detainee. They move to Truman's office. That evening, Gordon waits in the lobby for Cooper and senses immediately when he arrives. The two are delighted to see one another and Gordon has an important message which he delivers intently: "YOU REMIND ME TODAY OF A SMALL MEXICAN CHIHUAHUA." Withdrawing to the sheriff's office behind a close door (no matter; the others can hear every single word Gordon shouts), Cooper's supervisor worries about his condition, especially since he was wounded; "YOU GOT INTO THE CHUTE IN PITTSBURGH," he reminds him, but Cooper assures Gordon that this situation is different. Truman joins them as Gordon reveals a package from the sinister Windom Earle, Cooper's former partner who has escaped from an asylum. The envelope contains a typed message: "P to K-4" - a chess deal. In the conference room, the lawmen focus back on Gerard, who seems to be experiencing withdrawals. "IF WE GIVE HIM THE DRUG, COOP, YOU'LL NEVER SEE THE OTHER SIDE," Gordon acknowledges, and sure enough - as they withhold his medicine - Gerard emerges as a calm, eloquent personality, an "inhabiting spirit" named MIKE" who tells them about BOB, a parasitical spirit who feeds on "fears and the pleasures." Gordon listens intently, with neither disbelief nor full credulity.

Thursday, March 9, 1989
The following morning, everyone lines up in the lobby for coffee and donuts. Gordon announces his departure for Bend, Oregon, and says goodbye to the others, advising them "TAKE GOOD CARE OF MIKE!"

Thursday, March 16, 1989
A week later, Cooper has solved the Palmer case but faces a new crisis: wild accusations (including drug-running) have led to a suspension from the FBI. Gordon calls to let him know a DEA agent will be arriving soon; he also offers his full support. "DON'T LET 'EM RATTLE YOU, COOP," Gordon advises him. "THESE GUYS MAKE A LIVING LOOKING THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE'S DRAWERS. WE'VE ALL HAD OUR SOCKS TOSSED AROUND FROM TIME TO TIME. COUPLE WORDS OF ADVICE: LET A SMILE BE YOUR UMBRELLA."

Thursday, March 23, 1989
A cheerful Gordon rushes into the sheriff's office bearing the classified portion of the Windom Earle dossier. Joining Cooper, Truman, and Dr. Will Hayward, Gordon reveals that Windom used the same drug as the one-armed man and that he used to work on the Air Force's top-secret Project Blue Book, an investigation of UFOs. The gang heads out to breakfast, but not before Gordon tells Cooper to "DUST OFF YOUR OLD BLACK SUIT" - he's finally restoring him to the FBI. Cooper eagerly takes his badge and gun back and says, together with Gordon, "WE WILL PURSUE, CAPTURE, AND INCARCERATE" before offering each other the first of several happy thumbs-ups. At the RR Diner, Gordon spots a beautiful waitress and vows to engage her "IN A LITTLE COUNTER-ESPERANTO." He then loudly flirts with Shelly Johnson, dropping his volume for the first time only when he realizes he can hear her voice perfectly. "It's a miracle!" he declares. A lady with a log, also sitting at the counter, demands to know "What's wrong with miracles? This cherry pie is a miracle." Gordon agrees, and tells Shelly he wants some paper and a pencil (shouting again for some reason): "I'M GOING TO WRITE AN EPIC POEM ABOUT THIS PIE!"

Friday, March 24, 1989
Gordon's rental car is ready to go outside but he lingers at the diner, sitting across the booth from Shelly and telling her stories of his own adventures in the FBI. They are joined by Cooper and Annie Blackburn, a fellow waitress. He and Shelly receive three pieces of pie each; Gordon declares Shelly "a miracle worker, and a goddess sent from heaven." He then makes his move, telling Shelly he'll regret it forever if he doesn't kiss her and as they lean in to smooch, an angry Bobby Briggs bursts through the door: "What the hell is going on?" Gordon tells him exactly what's going on before chuckling to Shelly, "Acts like he's never seen a kiss before!" and turning back to Bobby with an invitation. "TAKE A GOOD LOOK, SONNY! IT'S GONNA HAPPEN AGAIN!" And sure enough it does.

Like Cooper, Gordon delights in the pleasures of Twin Peaks, although at first he's all business (to the extent such an enthusiastic, joyful man can be described that way). Though he certainly loves that pie, it's the women of Twin Peaks who seem to impress him most - especially one. Gordon's intervention in the narrative may be a case of directorial self-indulgence, but it also provides a boost to Shelly's flagging morale and a roundabout catalyst for a reconciliation with Bobby (the initially passionate lovers have been primarily antagonistic for over half the show at this point). Gordon is deeply connected to Twin Peaks' strange mysteries (or more broadly, the strange mysteries of the Twin Peaks world), as we discover most extensively in Fire Walk With Me. However, he is also a character of immense comic relief; if the filmmaker is typically linked with many of Twin Peaks' most disturbing moments, the actor facilitates some of the most delightful. Gordon, like Nadine, Johnny, and Gerard, exploits Twin Peaks' fascination with the disabled; unlike Eileen, whose condition is never remarked upon, Gordon's near-deafness is a constant punchline, albeit one that all the others characters grow accustomed to and roll along with. Some have criticized the show's comedy as ableist, as far back as 1990, while others find the humor so good-natured and affectionate as to be inoffensive. Thematically, Gordon demonstrates a wry distrust of language and communication that pervades Twin Peaks.

Gordon develops slowly over time - when we first hear him in season one, there's no indication at all that he has trouble hearing (his voice is a bit raised, but mostly it seems to convey the effect of speaking over a long-distance line). He has a certain folksy twang to his voice, but could hardly be described as eccentric - if anything he seems preoccupied with professional duties almost to a fault. When he arrives in person, the shouting shtick arrives with him, and he looks much more cheerful - there's no stern attitude taken with Truman, despite that earlier conversation (maybe he knows Albert and the sheriff have essentially patched things up). Gordon's still all about the job, but his manner is pleasant and relaxed - at least if that decibel level can be associated with relaxation. His next phone call is a bit lackluster (perhaps reflecting the performer's attitude about the material - "THESE ARE HARD TIMES" feels rather meta). If the first call didn't establish enough of a routine, this one leans too hard on the gag, but when Gordon returns to town it feels like all the elements have coalesced to form the perfect character. The diner scene is easily the best sequence in the twelve-episode stretch between Leland's death and the final episode, and while there are many factors, Gordon's presence and situation dominate them all.

By the time Gordon shows up in the movie, he has evolved into one of Twin Peaks' gurus, as much a spirit guide as the Log Lady or Major Briggs, albeit somehow way more cryptic and confidential than either of them. And even he is confused by the events of the film. Fire Walk With Me established Gordon's code, retroactively imbuing some of his stranger statements on the show (especially the "CHIHUAHUA" bit) with new purpose. As Desmond explains to Stanley, Lil's dance is a coded message, each gesture or piece of costume carrying symbolic weight. This is a comical pastiche of Twin Peaks' own ambivalent puzzle-making and demonstrates Gordon's journey from brilliant joke to iconic presence. Chronologically, beginning with the Banks case and ending with the Johnson kiss, Gordon's narrative is a fun shaggy dog, culminating in a miraculous albeit temporary restoration and a bit of cute romance. In order of writing and production, Gordon's arc exhibits a more subtle quality: the show's ability to birth instantly memorable character, and then gradually mould them into something even more compelling.

Popping up as an extra or in quick cameos in films throughout the eighties and nineties, the actor has found more prominent work in comedy these past few years, including a recurring voice role on The Cleveland Show and, most famously, as TV executive Jack Dahl (or is it Dall?) in Louie. Lynch did have one large role in the eighties, portraying a butler posing as a playboy in the film Zelly & Me, directed by Tina Rathborne (who also directed the funeral and wake episodes of Twin Peaks). Perhaps she recommended him to Twin Peaks' producers; it's hard to imagine how an actor with such a thin resume landed the memorable role of Gordon Cole. This will have to remain one of Gordon's Blue Rose mysteries... (film pictured: Dune, 1984)

Gordon's voice is introduced in one of Robert Engels' solo scripts, and the character shows up in person during an episode co-written by Engels (with Harley Peyton). Engels also co-writes the diner episode as well as Fire Walk With Me. The writer has talked about modeling Gordon's manner of speaking on his own near-deaf mother so it's reasonable to assume he had a big hand in shaping the character. Mark Frost also pens several Gordon episodes, one solo and another with Peyton, and Barry Pullman authors the second Gordon vocal-only guest spot. Gordon's directors include Lesli Linka Glatter (she was asked by the actor himself to step in for his first appearance) as well as Duwayne Dunham and Jonathan Sanger (who worked on Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, respectively). Dunham also directs a vocal performance, as does Tim Hunter (a fellow AFI alum). And of course Gordon is directed (in an episode and the film) and co-written (in the film) by some guy named David Lynch.

Gordon is onscreen (including voice-only) for roughly twenty-three minutes. He is in twelve scenes in six episodes plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection, taking place over a year. He's featured the most in episode 13, when he first arrives in Twin Peaks. His primary location is the sheriff's station. He shares the most screentime with Cooper. He is one of the top ten characters in episodes 13 and 25.




• Gordon Cole's name derives from one of David Lynch's favorite films, Sunset Boulevard. After aging silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) drives back to the Paramount lot, she receives a call from Mr. Cole. Joe Gillis (William Holden) answers the phone, thinking that the studio employee wants to offer her a part, but in fact Cole works for the props department and wants to use her car. Joe is dismayed for Norma's sake, and tells the caller to find another car. Lynch later noted that Billy Wilder was probably inspired to use the name "Gordon Cole" by the proximity of Gordon St. and Cole Av., which cross Sunset Blvd. a few blocks away from one another in Hollywood. For more on this film, you can check out my review which wrapped up my Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood series in 2008.

• Gordon isn't mentioned enough times to warrant a standalone section, but Albert does grumble, "Gordon Cole ordered me back here" in episode 8 (Cooper mentions him in passing in episode 21 as well - waiting to hear about his suspension). More memorably, in episode 22 Albert offers an impression of Gordon: "I'M WORRIED ABOUT COOP!" He also mentions that Gordon is following up on some of Windom Earle's clues, planting the seeds for his later return. As far as I can determine, there were no deleted scenes although Harley Peyton cops to some deleted dialogue - according to him, Bobby was supposed to dismiss his romantic rival as an "old guy" but that line mysterious wound up on the cutting room floor.

• A close-up shot of Gordon's bizarre hand gesture from the Lil sequence appears one scene later in Fire Walk With Me, as Desmond explains Gordon's code in meticulous detail. I'll save that quote, and any applicable analysis, for an upcoming entry.

• According to Scott Frost's The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes, Cooper met Gordon Cole on August 3, 1978, around 10:00am. "Seems to have a hearing problem," Cooper reports, "and one of the strongest sets of vocal chords I have ever encountered in my life." When Caroline Earle is killed and Cooper lands in the hospital, his morose dispatch to Diane contains only one light note: "Dad is here in the hospital now, as is Gordon Cole. They seem to have hit it off." Gordon later informs Cooper that Windom is in the psych ward after "finding" an already-attacked Cooper and Caroline. Gordon continues to look out for Cooper and shares his suspicions about Windom; "Gordon has really gone to bat for me," Cooper notes. Then, of course, we hit a discrepency. Written before Fire Walk With Me (in which Kyle MacLachlan refused to appear for more than a few days as Cooper, forcing a rewrite of the Deer Meadow case), this novel tells us that Gordon sent Cooper to investigation Teresa Banks' murder. "Gordon has asked me to handle it," Cooper tells Diane, "because he has this feeling it may be a serial event and none of the agents in that district have direct experience with one." 

• Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks dives more deeply than his brother's book, picking up where Fire Walk With Me left off to demonstrate Gordon's investigative links to the paranormal. (Interestingly, despite his connection to Jeffries and the suggestive nature of the "blue rose," even in the film there is never explicit reference to Gordon heading a sort of "supernatural squad"; Frost is essentially picking up on a mythos planted in the film, and even more subtly in the series, but evolving primarily in viewers' imaginations over subsequent years.) The book, in the form of a top-secret dossier, is ostensibly presented to us by Gordon himself - the introductory "interoffice memorandum" is professional but retains the now-deputy director's signature voice: "we need to know it yesterday!", "many moons ago", "roll up your sleeves and get to work on this thing." The dossier is notated by "TP," finally revealed as Tamara Preston, an FBI agent who works under Gordon and keeps diligent notes along the margins. One, in reference to a secret installation near Twin Peaks, reads "This points more or less directly to then-Regional Director Gordon Cole - who, as I recently pointed out, is one of my superior officers - as the 'FBI man' initially recommended to Doug Milford by none other than Tricky Dick himself, and I have to admit I find this troubling, but then, Director Cole's admonition to me was 'follow the trail wherever it may lead.'"

• The Secret History reveals that Gordon was trained at Quantico alongside Phillip Jeffries - indeed, they were the top two graduates in 1968. Gordon and Jeffries visited Twin Peaks years before the Laura Palmer investigation, in 1983, at the request of Mayor Dwayne Milford whose constituents were curious about a strange military installation located up in the mountains (no doubt, the Mayor was also curious because his brother, an ex-government spook, was directly involved). Gordon reports back that the government construction project is linked to President Regan's SDI ("Star Wars") missile defense initiative and hence all other information is classified, closing his letter with "We hope that this information serves to satisfy the patriotic spirit of their inquiries." In fact, as Tamara is able to confirm, "alleged SDI connection was intended as a misdirect." The base is clearly linked to Project Blue Book, Dougie Milford's work with UFOs, and, we must surmise, whatever haunts the woods of Twin Peaks and/or whisked Jeffries away from Buenos Aires several years later.

• Since I somehow forgot to include him in my character preludes, let me take this moment to celebrate Twin Peaks' other creator cameo: Cyril Pons. Pons is a TV reporter whose voice can be heard in the pilot, reporting on the train car crime scene and Ronette's emergence from the woods (this is the only time we see/hear any news coverage of the Laura Palmer case in the entire series, although the pilot's teleplay indicates it could have become a major theme). We later see him in episode 8, reporting from the ruins of the Packard Saw Mill (a weeping Shelly is watching him from her hospital bed). He is, of course, played by Mark Frost. Interestingly, Pons may be the only Twin Peaks character to cross over into another film - Frost intended for the character to appear in his directorial debut Storyville though I saw the movie and couldn't spot him (perhaps he was cut). A few years ago, I tweeted Frost with an question (misspelling the name, but hey, this was unknown at the time at least to me - it's apparently a reference to Solar Pons, a character created in tribute to Sherlock Holmes; I wish I could remember where I heard this). Anyway, Frost shared the tweet on his account...but, of course, didn't answer the query. As Tamara Preston and Gordon Cole himself often say...well, we'll get to that momentarily.


• It's hard to imagine any fictional character being better suited for David Lynch than Gordon Cole. The mixture of secretive code and open manner, boyish enthusiasm and professional authority, offbeat quirk and super-squaredom, is quintessentially Lynch. Gordon hammers home Lynch's mixture of esoteric weirdness and Eagle Scout simplicity, especially at a time when the filmmaker leaned much more conservative than he does today (he was well-known for praising Reagan in interviews and there is real admiration in his portrait of morally upright lawmen, however eccentric their behavior). That said, the character isn't simply his real-life personal transplanted into fictional form - the brilliant conceit of his hearing loss/vocal compensation makes Gordon a unique figure in his own right.


• If Gordon is a wide-eyed intuitive type, he may also represent the limits of a narrow view. Martha Nochimson (with whom I discussed Lynch several years ago) observes the following in her brilliant study The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood:

"The first thirty minutes of Fire Walk With Me tell us not to look to the logic of authorities to deliver us. ... 

Our first image of the brotherhood of detectives reveals Gordon Cole (David Lynch) who is about to begin the investigation into the death of Teresa Banks by summoning Special Agent Desmond. Cole stands in his office in front of a mural that recreates the surface appearance of the great outdoors. He shouts, as if across great distances, to a secretary who, when the camera pulls back, is revealed to be a few inches away from him. Cole's reality is a culturally created, flat simulacrum of time and space. The experience of depth is only betrayed by its absence and the odd excess of Cole's voice. 

Cole, arguably Lynch's comedic self-portrait, is the chief officer of this network of busy investigators, working with all seriousness in the flatlands of FBI procedures and only imagining the depths of mystery beyond the reach of a reductivist logic through his designation of a Blue Rose Case. A Blue Rose Case stumps the detectives because it confounds their depthless, bounded mindset with intimations of a world with manifold layers and without neat limits; the many-layered Teresa Banks murder is a Blue Rose Case. 

Parallel to the lack of spatial depth is the problem of language for the FBI. Cole's inability to hear begets his proclivity for yelling secrets and thus his need to invent a better mode of confidentiality. Therefore, he instructs Agent Desmond and his partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) using the body of a figure he refers to as Lil (Kimberly Ann Cole). As Cole 'writes' on Lil, he transforms a human body into an animated stick figure. Lil - actually three-dimensional - has been rendered cartoonlike for his purposes. ... Here, language takes on the flatness of Cole's opening gesture and flattens the body itself."

Amusingly, when Lynch agreed to his first of several interviews with Nochimson, he conducted the entire conversation in the persona - and voice - of Gordon Cole.



SHOWTIME: Yes, Lynch is on the cast list for 2017. One of the few promos released so far features Gordon Cole, alone (aside from a coffee-clasping hand that briefly strays into the frame), eating a donut for about twenty seconds. Watch and learn.


The closing words of The Secret History:

"As Director Cole once told me, that time he took me out for coffee, a big part of this job - and for that matter, life itself - is waiting for the right moment."

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.

Harold hides away in a world of books and orchids but his home is an epicenter of Twin Peaks' troubling vibrations, not a refuge.


Thursday, February 16, 1989
Harold Smith, an ex-horticulturalist trapped inside his little house by acute agoraphobia, hears Laura Palmer arrive outside. The teenage volunteer rushes inside, not bearing her Meals on Wheels bounty as usual, but trembling and clenching a little red book. She forces it on Harold, telling him it's her secret diary and she can't keep it anymore because BOB has found out about it. Harold tries to comfort her - "BOB is not real!" - but she sharply corrects him: "BOB is real. He's been having me since I was twelve." She says he wants to be her or he'll kill her. Laura presses herself on Harold and her face turns white and her teeth yellow as she hisses, "Fire...walk...with...me..." She tells Harold to hide the diary, begins kissing him, and then draws away, weeping, "I don't know when I can come back. Maybe never."

Saturday, March 4, 1989
Harold opens his blinds to glimpse a girl walking away from his door after leaving a note beneath it. When she turns to look back, he quickly closes them.

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Harold welcomes Laura's friend Donna into his home. She has adopted Laura's Meals on Wheels route after Laura's brutal murder just over a week ago. Harold introduces himself and asks if she could place an orchid on Laura's grave since he can't leave the house. He notices her grasping at something sticking out from a compartment in his bookshelf, but he doesn't comment on this. He seems smitten with the young woman, telling her about his friendship with Laura and explaining his condition to her. "I'll be back," she tells him. "I'll be here," Harold smiles. That night, she rushes back to his door and he comforts her as she cries about her boyfriend James. He leaves her in the room with a blanket around her shoulders.

Monday, March 6, 1989
Donna joins Harold for lunch as a thunderstorm brews outside. He pours her wine and reads a racy passage from Laura's diary, realizing belatedly that it might be embarrassing for the dead girl's best friend. Donna asks if they should bring the diary to the sheriff - isn't it evidence? Harold denies there's anything important in it and changes the subject to his grand project: "People come to me and tell me their stories about the world, outside. I take their stories and place them in a larger context, a sort of living novel." After noting that "friends" and "lovers" are among his subjects, he suggestively speculates "Maybe someday you will too."

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Donna tells Harold she'll allow him to record her life story if he allows her to read Laura's diary. He agrees (as long as he can read it to her, and it doesn't leave the room) and asks her to start, but after a few quick statements about her birth and parentage, Donna shifts the focus to him. Harold concedes some biographical details but tries to guide the conversation back in her direction. "There's things you can't get in books," Donna teases, adding, "Maybe our dreams are real." She then grabs Laura's diary and races outside - Harold follows her before his right arm shudders and he quickly collapses at his doorstep. She rushes to his side and cradles him as he trembles on the ground. That night, Donna returns for another session. This time she describes a sensuous memory she shared with Laura as a thirteen-year-old; at a certain point, Harold stops writing and just stares, riveted, as she recalls the adolescent skinny-dipping - "That was the first time I ever fell in love." Harold takes her inside the greenhouse and discusses orchids with her. They kiss, but a nervous Harold breaks away and leaves the room for a few minutes. When he returns, Donna is very uneasy; she keeps trying to distract him from something. He hears a noise in the living room and turns to see another girl, clad in black, rifling through the secret compartment in his bookshelf and clasping Laura's diary. Harold is furious; he's been betrayed. He grabs a trowel and races into the living room, threatening Donna and Maddy although ultimately he seems more interested in hurting himself, scratching the trowel across his face and drawing blood. As he tells them, the "ultimate secret" is "knowing who killed you." He shouts, "You lie, and you betray, and then you laugh about it! You are unclean! You have contaminated me!" Before he can reclaim the diary, a young man rushes into his house and grabs the two girls. Maddy drops the diary and Harold yanks it back before Donna can acquire it. He retreats into his greenhouse, furiously spraying his plants before dissolving into anguished cries.

Thursday, March 9, 1989
Deputy Hawk Hill arrives at Harold's house and looks around: pages of the diary are scattered across the floor, along with dirt and mangled flowers. He spots Harold through the glass window of his greenhouse: his legs and lower torso are dangling above the ground. Harold has hanged himself. As the secluded home becomes a crime scene, Sheriff Harry Truman and FBI Agent Dale Cooper remove a suicide note from Harold's shirt and read it aloud: "J'ai une âme solitaire," Cooper reads, quickly translating it: "I am a lonely soul.""Poor guy," Truman mutters.

There are characters who seem more tangential to the "essence" of Twin Peaks and characters who tap right into its core. For me at least, Harold is one of the latter. There are several reasons for this centrality, the primary being his connection to Laura. As the guardian of her secret diary he is in many ways the character closest to her in spirit - even her best friend Donna comes to him for knowledge of who she "really was." Harold's plot also keeps the Laura story alive at a time when other characters and subplots are drifting away from that hub; while Audrey lingers at One Eyed Jack's, Leo's condition is debated, and M.T. Wentz's arrival is anticipated, the Donna/Harold arc prevents early season two from falling too far and too fast from season one's heights. In many ways, it entails an intensification of the mystery: we're drawing closer to Laura as the revelation of her killer looms. But Harold isn't simply a venue toward Laura - he reminds us why she's such a brilliant device to flesh out the surrounding characters. There's no question in my mind that Donna, a frequently difficult character who doesn't always get the material she deserves, is at her peak when interacting with Harold. Watching them play together, possibly manipulating and/or being manipulated by each other, reminds us that Twin Peaks succeeds when Laura's tragedy serves as a focalization of the whole town's troubles. In this case, the characters' loneliness and uncertainty, not quite pitched to Laura's level and all the more sweetly melancholy for it, is amplified by her presence lingering in the humid air around them...even as they themselves refract and express her own pathos.

Harold is a character who benefits both from Laura's presence and her absence. If we observe his scenes in chronological order (and maybe read Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer beforehand, as it introduced Harold ahead of season two), we see what an impact Laura left on him and understand why he clings so tightly to her memory. On the other hand, Harold was initially constructed as a figure waving us toward an essentially unknowable Laura, long before the prequel was ever conceived. Harold, his intensity contained within walls he can't transgress, is the perfect embodiment of early season two, a period of the show which sustains the aura of intangibility around Laura's ghost while coaxing us into a revelation of her deepest, darkest secrets. His sensitivity dooms him, and yet it isn't Laura who ultimately does Harold in - it's Donna. There is ambiguity in Harold's arc (one of my favorite analyses of the character astutely compares him to Norman Bates). It's present from the earliest episodes (especially when Donna discovers Laura's diary in his possession) but especially sharp near the end of their story, when he threatens Donna and Maddy and mentions "the secret of knowing who killed you!" Many suspect that he is the killer, a suspicion only put to rest when his body is found in the episode that actually reveals the killer. In this order, the film is a postscript; now that we know Harold's innocence, his relationship to Laura becomes purely poignant, and we see them both as victims who depend upon and possibly take advantage of one another. Their nearly violent separation at the end of the scene underlines how wounded Harold is, and how his wounds echo Laura's.

Von Dohlen is an eloquent exponent of his craft who grew up dreaming of being a jockey (his dreams were dashed when he sprouted up to 6'1" in adolescence). As a Texan worried about being tyepcast, he studied John Gielgud's recordings and resolutely erased his accent, only to get cast in his first major feature, Tender Mercies...which required a Texan accent! Von Dohlen went on to star in the cult classic Electric Dreams, a Cyrano de Bergerac-like sci-fi romcom in which a man's sentient computer (imbued with intelligence when he douses it in champagne to extinguish a fire) creates a musical duet with a beautiful neighbor whom the man also loves. A strange triangle emerges between man, woman, and computer. (The film's love interest, Virginia Madsen, definitely preferred the man: "I had a mad, crazy crush on Lenny Von Dohlen..." she acknowledges. "I wanted it to happen.") Von Dohlen relishes the alchemy of performance, describing his scene with Sheryl Lee (a close friend) in Fire Walk With Me as "almost like lava ... when it came together, it was supercharged." He has acted in over sixty films and TV shows, including the Twin Peaks pastiche episode of Psych, "Dual Spires," in which he plays the town's sheriff, reuniting with Lee under quite different circumstances. He currently has eight projects in various stages of production. (film pictured: Electric Dreams, 1984)



Harold was conceived by Harley Peyton; not every character can be traced back to a single writer but Peyton has acknowledged that this one was inspired by his interest in The Inman Diaries. Arthur Crew Inman was an Atlanta heir and frustrated poet who moved to Brookline and bought several apartments around his own to shield himself from surrounding noise. Imagining many of his conditions while also possibly suffering from a few real ones (some have speculated frontal-lobe epilepsy), Inman maintained a diary for forty-three years, stretching from the year after World War I ended to the year that Kennedy was killed. This included extensive interviews with various guests, many of whom he would sleep with (Inman had a wife who likely knew of and tolerated and his numerous affairs). Inman was also a paranoic right-winger who loathed "Jews, Italians, and Roosevelt while admiring Hitler" according to Time Magazine (which also memorably described him as a "megalomaniacal bigot misogynist Peeping Tom hypochondriac" and "one of the most bizarre Americans in the history of the Republic.") He was killed by the Prudential Building, whose audible construction agitated him so much that he shot himself in his apartment. His diary was unpublished during his life and was only released a few years before Twin Peaks, when his elderly widow finally passed away in 1985. The work was widely celebrated for the social portraits of twentieth-century America reported within its pages.

In what must be a nod to Harold's origin, writer Barry Pullman (who wrote the most Harold material) traces Harold's origin back to Boston ("well, actually," Harold confesses, "I grew up in books"). Harold was also written in a solo Robert Engels script; ironically, aside from showing Harold's hand quickly lifting a blind, Peyton only had the opportunity to collaborate on two Harold scenes, once with Engels, and once with Engels, Jerry Stahl, and Mark Frost (Frost also wrote the discovery of Harold's body). Harold's first and last episodes as a living, present character were directed by Lesli Linka Glatter; in between he was directed by Todd Holland and especially Graeme Clifford, who handled his big episode. Lynch directed the introduction to and conclusion for Harold, but since the first was a brief shot of his hands and the second was his corpse (depicted by a double or a mannequin), Von Dohlen was disappointed never to work with the filmmaker he admired. Fortunately, Fire Walk With Me (written by Lynch and Engels and directed by Lynch) came to the rescue. Though his scene was brief, the actor was impressed by the extent to which Lynch went out of his way to express its importance beforehand - and afterwards. "When it was over," Von Dohlen recalls, "I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. David was dancing a jig. I thought, 'Wow. That's what it should be about'. He was celebrating the exploration. He acknowledged the moment. And that is very, very rare."

Harold is onscreen for roughly twenty-five minutes. He is in twelve scenes in six episodes plus the feature film, taking place over three weeks (but mostly within three days). He's featured the most in episode 12, when he is betrayed by Donna after an evening together. His only location - surprise! - is his house. He shares the most screentime with Donna - in fact he's with her in every scene aside from Fire Walk With Me and the discovery of his corpse. He is one of the top five characters in episodes 10 and 12.




Episode 8: Harold himself is not mentioned in this episode, but Donna receives a note from Norma which reads "Look into the Meals on Wheels." She follows its advice and calls Norma that evening to set up her route for the following day. Though there has been some speculation about who wrote this message (some guess Norma, or even the Log Lady), Harold seems to acknowledge its authorship when Donna later says "Why did you write that letter?" (which he answers as if he did).

Episode 9: Donna is directed to Harold's house by the strange Mrs. Tremond, an old woman on the Meals on Wheels route, who advises Donna, "Young lady, you might ask Mr. Smith next door. He was Laura's friend." Her young grandson, sitting across the room in a tuxedo intersperses, "J'ai une âme solitaire." Mrs. Tremond then further expands: "Mr. Smith does not leave his house." That night, Doc Will Hayward shouts downstairs to his daughter that she has a phone call from a "Mr. Smith." (Harold's lines are scripted but in the episode we only hear Donna's side of the conversation.) Donna says "I received yours," implying that Harold sent her that note. James watches, uncertain about what's going on, and she (already upset with him) refuses to say more.

Episode 10: Donna runs into James holding hands with Maddy in the diner; rather vengefully, she informs James that "I met someone from Meals on Wheels ... Someone real interesting." James refers to "old folks," and Donna corrects him: "This was a young man.""What's wrong with him?" James asks. "Hard to say," Donna answers. "Other than that he's intelligent and charming and completely different from anyone I know." Later, she is shown placing the orchid on Laura's grave. She then talks to her dead friend (in a scene many have cringed at, but I think it's great; I'll save my Lara Flynn Boyle apologetics for a later entry). "This is from Harold Smith," she acknowledges, leading up to, "So were you sleeping with this guy Harold or what? He seems pretty nice. Kind of an oddball. Although I guess anyone can start to seem like that when you look close enough."

Episode 11: When Hank Jennings hands Donna her Meals on Wheels tray at the diner, he notes her appearance and remarks, "You're looking real pretty today, Donna." She acknowledges she's going to have "Lunch with...someone I met on my route." Mockingly, Hank chuckles, "Bed pans and shut-ins. Who's to meet?" And ("as if to defend the absent Harold Smith" the teleplay tells us) she replies, "You wouldn't understand." That evening, back at the diner, Donna is on the offensive against Harold rather than defending him; she informs Maddy that he has Laura's diary and demands her help in stealing it.

Episode 12: With Maddy on board, Donna draws a map of Harold's apartment and shows her where to find Laura's diary. "I thought you liked this guy," a confused Maddy observes. Donna pauses, a bit confused herself, and admits, "I do." At Harold's house she signals Maddy with a flashlight when Harold leaves the greenhouse, which draws her in to check the bookshelf.

Episode 13: As they race from Harold's house, Donna tells James to stop: "He's not coming. He won't. He's afraid." She tells James he didn't hurt her, but her infatuation seems to have ended. She is horrified that Maddy was in danger, and acknowledges, "He has Laura's secret diary, he could've killed her!" James says he could have killed Donna too, and she admits her actions of the past few days were stupid. She visits the sheriff during the day and tries to tell him about the diary at Harold's house but he seems skeptical.

Episode 14: Hawk is asked about his warrant for Harold's "apartment" (as it is repeatedly described although it appears to be a standalone building; perhaps because it's part of a complex, a bit like the residential units explored in Mulholland Drive?). At the crime scene, Hawk finds Laura's diary amidst the wreckage and Cooper declares, "Pay dirt!" That evening at the Road House, Donna asks James if he's heard about Harold. "It wasn't anybody's fault," James insists. "He was a sick man." Donna persists: "I think he was hurt inside in a way I couldn't figure out." James, unimpressed, tells her, "Everybody's hurt inside.""His whole life was in that house," Donna recognizes. "And I violated that.""You were just trying to find out about Laura," James counters. "James," Donna presses, "he's dead. He didn't deserve that."

Episode 16: When Andy repeats Harold's suicide note at the diner, a shocked Donna presses him for more (she recognizes the French phrase from her visit to the Tremonds). She then takes Cooper to the Tremond house, hoping Harold's neighbors can provide more information. "Harold's world was in his words," Donna tells the agent. "The suicide note has to be a message." Instead, she is confronted by an entirely different Mrs. Tremond, who says that she lives in the house and that her mother died years ago. However, she has an envelope from Harold addressed to Donna. Cooper and Donna open it to discover a page from Laura's diary which describes Laura's dream, the same dream that Cooper experienced. For some reason, Harold - even his distressed state - knew this was important to share. When Donna visit Leland Palmer later that day, she tells him that Laura left a secret diary with Harold. Leland seems shocked and peculiarly disturbed by this revelation.


• In The Secret Diary, Laura's first entry on Harold Smith is obstructed: "Even my new friend Harold Smith" is followed immediately by "PAGE RIPPED OUT." A later entry reveals that Harold, described as "botanist" (i.e. a scientist who studies plants) rather than "horticulturalist" (an artist of gardening), "awoke one morning to find himself agoraphobic. He believes death is just outside his door, and that late at night it calls him from outside like a strange bird." On March 27 a year before she dies, she spends a day with Harold, telling him stories of her sexual escapades. Though they turn him on, he is alarmed by her advances. "I love Harold's tenderness," Laura admits, "and most often feel wonderful when I am with him and when I think about him. But sometimes I hate myself more that you can imagine for the aroused feelings I get when I see Harold's frightened face, which must be the same thing BOB sees when he looks at me. The prey, cornered...so degraded...made a toy."

• Their tale grows even darker. In her last recorded visit to Harold, the penultimate entry of the whole diary, Laura admits to raping Harold (although that characterization is complicated, among other considerations, by the fact that she's a minor). "And then, basically because he could not leave his house, forced him to have sex with me. I told Dr. Jacoby that I cried for hours afterwards because I felt so horrible. It took Harold almost an hour to talk to me because I had made him scared, even in his own home, his only refuge. And then I told Dr. Jacoby that half the time I hated it and the rest of the time it made me feel strong and hot between the legs." A few entries later, after stating that she knows who BOB is, she tells her diary "I'm giving you to Harold for safekeeping."

• In Harold's deleted side of the phone conversation from episode 9, he says, "I received your note. ... Yes. ... Tomorrow. ... Here. At noon. The time we meet is critical. ... Tomorrow, Donna. I will show you what Laura gave me."

• When he collapses outside his door in episode 12, the script adds a bit of additional dialogue and action. Harold tells Donna, "I just...I just got too close." Donna asks, "To what?" but instead of answering Harold kisses her for the first time. (Perhaps the director excised this so as to punch up the impact of their later kiss.) That evening, when Donna debriefs Maddy, their dialogue extends beyond where the episode cuts. "Doesn't it make you feel a little weird," Maddy asks, "stealing from him?" Donna says she'll return the diary if there's nothing there and Maddy asks if she'll see Harold again. "Yes," Donna admits. "I like him. A lot." Maddy smiles and suggests, "Why don't I just sneak in when the fireworks start," and they both laugh.

• In the script for episode 14, Hawk, Truman, and Cooper all discover Harold's body together. Cooper brings Gerard to the crime scene, and he declares that "Bob has not visited here" (confirming for the viewer that, just a few minutes into the episode, the killer has not yet been revealed). "We're trying to get ahold of Jacoby in Hawaii," Truman informs Cooper. "Smith was a patient." Cooper asks about agoraphobia and Truman rather dismissively mutters, "He was a class 'A' nutball, that much seems clear." Later, in the sheriff's station, Doc Hayward relays Harold's blood type and Cooper reveals (it's unclear how he knows) that Harold never left his apartment the night of Laura's murder. At the Road House, James' criticism of Harold goes further: "That doesn't mean you can go around trying to knock somebody's brains out." When Donna insists Harold was defending himself, James says, "Donna, are you defending him?" Donna tells him that Harold didn't kill Laura and James stubbornly refuses to cede ground. "You better be clear about this; this was his choice. If he didn't want to live there was nothing you or the police or anybody could do to change that." With this in mind, Donna compares Harold to Laura.

• "Harold's Theme" is my favorite piece of music from the show. (There are a couple beautifulvariations on that main version; the first is used to brilliant effect in the "'round the town" Atmospherics montage on the blu-ray.)


SHOWTIME: No, Von Dohlen is not on the cast list for 2017. I suspect Harold haunts Twin Peaks as a restless spirit, wandering the town yet unable to return to the guarded security of the home he hid inside during his short life.

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.

Evelyn deceives and conspires with so many different lovers that eventually she begins to question her own aims.


Thursday, March 16, 1989
At Hide-Out Wallie's, a rustic bar somewhere in Washington state, Evelyn Marsh savors her olive as the bartender pours another drink. A young man in a leather jacket enters, and Evelyn immediately sizes him up. After some flirtatious banter (discovering that he is a biker fleeing Twin Peaks for nowhere in particular), she offers James Hurley a job. Mrs. Marsh recently crashed her wealthy husband's Jaguar and hopes James' mechanical aptitude can salvage it before he returns home. At the Marsh estate, James tells Evelyn it's fixable; she tells him about her husband's obsession with perfection and asks him about his motorcyle. "I guess I'm not so interested in how my bike looks as where it can take me..." he admits. "It's not really a place, it's a feeling." She invites him to stay in the guest apartment while he works on the car.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Evelyn visits James as he works in the garage. He says her brother told him about her husband, and asks about the state of her marriage. She tells him to mind his own business but after this shaky start to their conversation, they end up kissing. Then she sees her husband Jeffrey pull up across the driveway and races out to see him. "It's not as bad as I made it out to be," she insists.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
Visiting James, Evelyn wears dark shades and when James removes them he sees that her face is bruised. He tells her why he left Twin Peaks - a girl died, and he was confronted by how little he knew her. Then another girl was murdered, and he hopped on his bike and drove away. Evelyn kisses James again, and as she hears Jeffrey leave she pleads for James to help her out (but she doesn't say how). That afternoon James shows her the restored car and they drink champagne and make out. That night Evelyn sneaks out of the bed she is sharing with James. In the hallway outside, Malcolm, the family chauffeur and her supposed "brother," smooches Evelyn and snickers at the sleeping James. Evelyn looks distressed.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
James chats with Jeffrey as Evelyn watches them with aloof cool. The very uncomfortable James quickly dismisses himself and Evelyn watches Jeffrey drive away in his Jaguar. As his engine fades into the distance, she hears a screech and and a loud crash: a nearby accident, or a premonition of what's to come? She goes to James' apartment and finds him packing, surly and wounded, telling her their romance is wrong as she begs him not to leave her with Jeffrey. He storms away to check on his bike. Evelyn goes to Wallie's and runs into a teenage girl from Twin Peaks, asking around for James. She tells this girl, named Donna, that James was at her house to fix a car but he's since departed. She's dismissive and condescending and Donna responds warily. Back at her house that evening, Evelyn reveals to James that Jeffrey has died in a car crash - "Oh my God," he realizes, "You killed him!" Evelyn blames Malcolm but acknowledges that James has been framed (as the police pull up outside). She tearfully proclaims her love and begs him to escape. He runs out of the house and she walks downstairs to feed a story to the police outside. Finding the time, before the night is over, to don a widow's veil and black dress, Evelyn corrects Malcolm when he stumbles over "Jim"'s name with the state troopers: "James. James Hurley." When the troopers leave, Malcolm manhandles the miserable Evelyn and tells her he doesn't want "a nervous co-conspirator."

Monday, March 20, 1989
A drunken Evelyn runs into Donna again at Wallies and mercilessly mocks the flustered adolescent when she pleads on James' behalf. "He was good at two things," Evelyn sneers. "The car...and me." Donna is furious: "You really like to make everything sound pointless and stupid, don't you?" Malcolm interrupts their spat to shove Evelyn out the door, (barely) acting like a concerned chauffeur. Evelyn continues to drink at the house, blowing smoke rings and staring at the ceiling until James bursts in, demanding answers. She admits that she's not good and honest but that her love for him was sincere at least some of the time. They end up kissing again but Malcolm bashes James over the head and plots how to disguise his murder as self-defense, handing a gun to Evelyn so her fingerprints will be on it. Donna runs to James' side and begs for his life while Malcolm demands the gun. Evelyn retreats, Malcolm pursues, and Evelyn fires directly at his chest. The dying Malcolm collapses on her and drags them both to the ground where Evelyn flails around and begins practicing how she will explain this to the police: "He was angry, he was crazy, he killed Jeffrey, he came back to kill me. ... I shot him till he was dead."

We never see Twin Peaks in Evelyn's scenes, though it's mentioned frequently. Unfortunately, wherever she lives doesn't have much of an identity the way, say, Deer Meadow or Philadelphia do. There's no sense of a community that can define Twin Peaks by contrast or comparison. Evelyn does scoff at James' first mention of the town, as if it seems provincial by comparison to her luxurious lifestyle. And her treatment of Donna reveals a similar contempt. This contempt is returned by many Twin Peaks fans; this is possibly the show's most disliked storyline and by extension, one of its least popular characters. The objections to the Evelyn Marsh detour are numerous: it's far from Twin Peaks, it revolves around James (hardly the most dynamic member of the show's ensemble), the plot is both predictable and underwhelming, and the material is tonally divorced from everything else on the show (more like a straight-up formulaic soap opera than a subversion of the form). Evelyn Marsh exemplifies the moment that Twin Peaks really, truly stumbles. There are earlier warning signs, but the Laura Palmer mystery holds the show together for the first half of the series. The sharp decline begins an episode before Evelyn, as a number of wacky subplots kick off, but Evelyn's entrance signifies that the series is going to stick in this irrelevant mode. This plus its extended length (by comparison, Little Nicky only appears in three scenes, with a handful of others following up on these brief appearances) and, probably especially, its literal distance from Twin Peaks marked "Evelyn Marsh" as shorthand for Twin Peaks' decline. But what of the character herself?

Evelyn is more a type than a flesh-and-blood person. Her arch banter and cunning glances immediately declare "femme fatale" in the first few frames. From there, the writers, actress, and directors must figure out what to do with this cliche. Unfortunately, Evelyn only begins transcending her broad outlines in her final episode, at which point the story has exhausted itself (many viewers are stunned to see it continue, assuming that James' escape signified the ending). Nonetheless, Evelyn does exhibit growth over the course of five episodes. The revelation of her manipulation comes as no surprise; we're waiting for that shoe to drop from the very beginning. More subtle is the emergence of a guilty conscience. The confirmation of her duplicity, as she embraces Malcolm outside James' room, is immediately accompanied by a forlorn look and this ambivalence continues when the plot comes to a head. The conclusion of her arc fully explores this gray area between devious conspirator and dissatisfied depressive. While the execution of Evelyn's narrative leaves much to be desired, there is the raw material for a compelling characterization - making the outcome all the more disappointing. There is a potentially interesting character and situation buried beneath the tired treatment Twin Peaks offers; it's even possibile for this story to tie in to the larger pathos of the Laura mystery and the desperation of the town. However, I'll leave the rest of that discussion for James' entry.

McCarthy plays a medical officer in the sci-fi horror film Creature who is ultimately (spoiler alert) decapitated and fed to the titular alien (designed by a team that worked on Aliens a year later). Aside from a bit part as a nurse in the comedy Second Thoughts, this was McCarthy's only film work - most of her credits are in television, including Magnum, P.I., Night Court, Happy Days, St. Elsewhere, and Beauty and the Beast. She was personally cast by David Lynch for Twin Peaks and went on to appear in several episode of Baywatch - her last listed role - in the mid-nineties (she has since become an executive chef; earlier in her career, she doubled as a rock musician, opening for and partying with Twisted Sister). She is on Twitter (her bio simply states "The Real Evelyn Marsh") and conducted a great interview with Brad Dukes a few years ago (in which she reveals that she was both Sofia Coppola's and Zooey Deschanel's babysitter). When Dukes published his seminal oral history Reflections in 2014, she became a crucial presence in the book. McCarthy acknowledges that "my scenes with James were a little overdramatic and some of the lines were pretty silly, but it was cute, what can I say?" She clearly appreciated the experience and particularly remembers the champagne scene: "we actually drank champagne and they took (I think) maybe twelve takes of it. I had to drink twelve glasses of champagne! At one point they had to take me to the dressing room and lay me down. (laughs) The production assistant screamed to get some sparkling water instead. ... James and I were wasted. Wasted!" James Marshall, though frustrated with the direction his character took, enjoyed this aspect of the work too: "It was totally fun working with Annette though, she was really cool. She was really fun and a really good actress, aside from being an incredible kisser!" (film pictured: Creature, 1985)


Harley Peyton is the creator of the Evelyn Marsh storyline. He recently confirmed that the Otto Preminger noir Angel Face is a particular inspiration (see the "Additional Observations" section below for more). Peyton writes one solo script for Evelyn, as well as collaborating twice with Robert Engels. Barry Pullman introduces Evelyn and Scott Frost writes one of her episodes. Evelyn is directed by Duwayne Dunham, Caleb Deschanel, Todd Holland, Uli Edel, and Diane Keaton. Keaton brings out the most in the actress and character. In Reflections, David Patrick Kelly observes, "she brings this idea of empowering women," and Wendy Robie also remarks that Keaton "understood Nadine so well ... She completely understood." This sympathy carries over to Evelyn as well. After floundering as a stock figure for four episodes, she suddenly becomes a poignant figure and McCarthy relishes the opportunity to demonstrate the character's vulnerability - as well as her bite (the bar scene with Donna is more effective than the earlier one with James, which itself was one of her better moments). Keaton also lavishes attention on the sleek, chic side of Evelyn's persona, lingering over the close-up of her veil (superimposed over numerous other scenes), a slow-motion shot of her blowing smoke rings, and inserts of her hands caressing glamor magazines and glistening ashtrays. For some viewers, it's too little too late; for many, it's way too much when they're ready for the story to be over. I have many issues with Keaton's episode, but looking at this arc as a whole I find her attentive, enthusiastic treatment of Evelyn to be among the more redeeming aspects of this character's material.

Evelyn is onscreen for roughly twenty-six minutes. She is in fourteen scenes in five episodes, taking place over five consecutive days. She's featured the most in episode 22, when she kills Malcolm. Her primary location is the Marsh house. She shares the most screentime with James. She is one of the top ten characters in episode 18, one of the top five characters in episodes 20 and 21, and second only to Cooper in episode 22.




Episode 19: Malcolm introduces himself to James as Evelyn's brother. He rattles off a lot of exposition - including that Jeffrey Marsh beats her regularly. James is shocked as the bitter Malcolm spits out, "Sonny boy, nobody stops Mr. Marsh." That night, during a thunderstorm, James hears noises from across the courtyard - muffled shouts and breaking glass. As he gazes out the window Malcolm enters the room and grumbles again, this time finishing on an ominous note: "And one day...I swear I'll kill him. No matter what it costs."

Episode 22: James and Donna hide out in Wallie's. James argues that he may be able to convince Evelyn to tell the cops the truth. "She'd listen to me," he insists, "I know she would.""Why?" asks Donna, suddenly guessing at the reason if she hasn't already.

Episode 23: In their last scene together on the show (and James' last scene, period), Donna and James have a picnic in the woods and discuss the aftermath of the Evelyn drama and everything else that has happened to them in the past few weeks. James tells Donna he's going to be a witness in Evelyn's trial (presumably for the prosecution). Donna tells James she knows about him and Evelyn. James understands if she hates him, but Donna says Evelyn took advantage of the state James was in after Maddy's death. She encourages him to hit the road, to get the wanderlust out of his system, and says, "I'll miss you like crazy, but you'll come back and and tell me a bunch of great stories. And none of them will be about Laura, or Maddy, or Evelyn."


• The similarities between Angel Face and the Evelyn Marsh arc are easy to spot: in both stories, a man with mechanical aptitude (who was not working as a mechanic) is lured by a bold, seductive woman to her estate to work on an expensive car and conduct a relationship with her (the Beverly Hills mansion in Angel Face even looks remarkably similar to the Marsh home). The woman shares her house with a family member and an interloper into the family whom she greatly resents, presenting them to her lover as a dangerous, even violent threat. She kills that person by messing with the engine of the car the mechanic has been working on, implicating him in the process. Perhaps most obviously, the moment the victim climbs into the car, the camera closes in on the conspirator's quiet, vaguely excited expression as they listen to offscreen noises - and later react to the carnage. Interestingly, the femme fatales in both films are not purely manipulative schemers like Double Indemnity's Phyllis Dietrichson or The Postman Always Rings Twice's Cora Smith; both Evelyn Marsh and Jean Simmons' character in Angel Face (who bears the remarkably Twin Peaks-ian name Diane Tremayne) are torn between cold-hearted plotting and a genuine affection for their targets. That said, Evelyn falls much closer to the Phyllis/Cora prototype than younger, unstable Diane - and Diane also isn't part of a scheme with another man who is setting up her lover, the way Evelyn is with Malcolm. This may be a crucial difference; part of what makes Angel Face work is the poignant ambiguity of Diane's motivations. There is a sense that even she isn't sure where seductive homewrecker ends and naive innocence begins. Evelyn's uncertainty, on the other hand, is a function of her maturity and experience. She is a worldly cynic moved by James' guileless sweetness rather than a young woman caught in Oedipal confusion between being a daughter and a lover: Diane's victim is her stepmother and she is motivated by a jealous attachment to her father. Much more could be said about the telling differences between the two works, but those observations can wait for another entry.


SHOWTIME: No, McCarthy is not on the cast list for 2017. Evelyn is either still in prison or she's settled quietly somewhere else far from the events of the town she never lived in nor thought much of. Then again, there is another possibility (quasi-spoiler warning, if you'd apply that distinction to information conveyed by one of the actors to Entertainment Weekly) given the fondness for dramatic pregnancies on the part of Twin Peaks (Lucy and Andy), its creators (Ed and Nadine, apparently?!), and its viewers (theories about Jack leaving Audrey with a baby). Photos from the set of the new Twin Peaks show James with a young man who looks like he could be his son. The assumption would be that Donna, or maybe some later girlfriend, is his mother. But what if the boy was born in the state pen to a mother sent there by his father...

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.

Mike is a follower - whether surly mimic of his best friend or grinning boy toy for a superwoman, this restless jock is perpetually pulled forward by stronger forces than himself.


Thursday, February 16, 1989
Mike Nelson, a Varsity football player and wrestler at Twin Peaks High School, perches on the edge of Bobby Briggs' convertible on a school morning. Their minds aren't on class. Mike is worried about their business, selling cocaine to other students. They owe Leo Johnson $5,000 and Bobby doesn't seem nearly as concerned. Their girlfriends walk by and decline a ride to school. Mike calls out to his girlfriend, Donna Hayward, "That's what I like about you, you're tough to handle. That's what you need a real man." Donna teases him back, and Mike and Bobby both stand up inside the car and chant, "Mike...is the man!"

Friday, February 24, 1989
Mike is at football practice before school when he overhears his coach talking about Bobby on the phone, remarking, "He's been late every day this week, Mrs. Palmer. And last week." When Bobby does saunter into the hallway later that morning, Mike warns him: "Something's up." Bobby is called into the principal's office. Bobby's girlfriend, and Donna's best friend, Laura Palmer has been murdered, and Mike sets off to look for Donna when the sheriff asks for her. He finds his girlfriend at Big Ed's Gas Farm and gets into an argument with her and Ed, driving away in a fury. Later, as Mike waits for Donna outside the sheriff's conference room, Bobby shows up at the station. He delivers some additional bad news - an FBI agent showed him a video of Laura and Donna taken by a mysterious third person whom Bobby suspects is a "freakin' biker." Mike and Bobby drink up and head over to the Haywards' house that night. Mike makes a poor impression on his girlfriend's dad, smoking on the porch, telling him that Bobby (who is clearly wasted) is driving them around, and rudely insisting "Oh, we'll find her, don't you worry about that," when Doc Will Hayward tells him Donna is missing. The buddies go to the Road House and wait at the bar, surrounded by hostile bikers, until sure enough Donna walks through the door. Mike grabs her and insists she's just like Laura. Ed, who is also there, tries to intervene but Bobby punches him and a big fight breaks out. Mike and Bobby taking on the whole motorcycle gang until they're finally knocked down (by this point, Donna has disappeared). Arrested and held in a jail cell overnight, Mike and Bobby see James Hurley, a biker who wasn't at the Road House, escorted into the cell across from them. In a form of macho intimidation, they bark loudly as he cowers in his corner.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
Mike and Bobby are still in their cell the next day. Mike says Leo called his house yesterday and Bobby admits he's already given Leo half the money they owed him. Unfortunately, the other half is still being held in Laura's safety deposit box, which must now be police property. Mike is irritated that Bobby never told him this and worried about what Leo will do. That afternoon, Cooper tells them they're free to go but they should "pray for the health and safety of James Hurley, because if anything happens to him we're coming for you." It's not warning enough; that night the duo drive over to the Hayward house and see James' bike parked outside. "First your girlfriend, then mine," marvels Mike. "Too bad we can only kill him once," Bobby sneers. Then they're off to the woods to pick up product from Leo Johnson; Mike shows Bobby his switchblade, just in case. They find only half of the cocaine they're looking for inside a slashed football before Leo himself emerges from the trees with a flashlight and shotgun, berating and threatening the two frightened drug dealers. At the end of their exchange, he aims the gun right at them and tells them to "go out for a pass." They run hysterically through the forest and the deflated football lands on the car just as they reach it. "Damn it, I'm done, Bobby," Mike wheezes.

Monday, February 27, 1989
At Laura's funeral, Bobby attacks James and Mike intervenes, first, it seems, to pull Bobby away but then to join in until he too is being restrained.

Wednesday, March 9, 1989
A week and a half later, Bobby brings Mike into Leo Johnson's house and shows him Leo's current condition. Leo was shot by a local thug (when Bobby was in the room) and is now in a vegetative state, confined to a wheelchair, silent except for the occasional random outburst. One of these outbursts - "New shoes!" - inspired Bobby to pick up a pair of boots Leo was having repaired; Mike suggests he get a hammer and they bang open the heel to discover a micro-cassette tape.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
At school a week later, Mike says hi to his ex in the hallway. In the weeks since they broke up, they both have quickly moved on. Donna is chatting with Nadine Hurley, Ed's wife and James' aunt, who for some reason is attending high school again as if she was a teenager. She smiles and greets Mike, who ignores her. Later, in the gym, she sits next to Mike and begins using the leg press. He is pressing two hundred forty pounds...she is (easily) pressing six hundred. Coach Wingate rushes to her side, amazed, and invites her to join the wrestling team. Mike is shocked.

Friday, March 17, 1989
At practice, Nadine wrestles Mike, the district champion, taking him down while asking for a date. Mike looks battered by the end of the session and when he runs into Donna later he readily confesses, "I got beat up by a girl." He asks, in vain, if she'll help keep Nadine away by pretending they're still a couple. "Maybe an older woman's just what you need," Donna chuckles.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
At the RR Diner, Nadine sits next to Mike and offers moony compliments. He's had enough and insists in no uncertain times that "I don't want to talk with you, I don't want to walk with you, I don't want to see you, I don't want to know you. Is that clear enough to understand?" Apparently not, as she forces a long, hard kiss. When she leaves, Mike slowly raises himself back up to the counter, shaken and no longer entirely sure what he wants.

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Mike is now fully committed to Nadine, but still uncomfortable being seen with her. They check into the Great Northern Hotel disguised as "the Hinkmans," an out-of-town couple on vacation. One of Mike's classmates runs into him and blows his ridiculous cover (a gray coat, fedora, and spectacles). The couple beat a hasty exit before the concierge asks too many questions.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
The next morning the mood has lifted - even the desk clerk is delighted by the contagious cheer of the clearly oversexed Mike and Nadine. "How was everything?" he asks with a smile. "Incredible," Mike beams. Donna shows up at the desk next to them, asking for someone at the hotel and Mike greets her warmly before staggering away with Nadine (Donna is equally amused).

Friday, March 24, 1989
Mike escorts Nadine to the Miss Twin Peaks peagant sign-up at the Road House. They are not totally open in their relationship and when Bobby asks his pal about this "sudden interest in the life of fossils," Mike explains, "It's not what you think." He whispers something in Bobby's ear and Bobby is so astounded he belts out a loud, "WHOA!" The whole Road House looks up, and he staggers away as Mike winks knowingly at Nadine.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Now Mike is nervous again - Nadine is conducting a slide show of her wrestling triumphs for Mike, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, Norma Jennings...and Ed. The group has gathered at Nadine's house to painfully explain that, despite thinking she's still seventeen, she's married to Ed and they'll be getting a divorce, not just breaking up. Mike looks uncomfortable to be in the presence of his lover's husband, even though it's in Ed's interest for Nadine to date Mike. After all, as Ed hesitantly reveals, "Norma and I are going to get married." Nadine, who has been clutching Mike's left hand this whole time, tenses up and declares that she and Mike are getting married too. Before he has time to digest this information himself, Mike shrieks with pain: Nadine has applied bone-crushing pressure to his hand by gripping it so tightly. Mike somehow avoids a cast or a sling, but that night Doc Hayward is forced to address another wound. Both Mike and Nadine have bloody bandages wrapped around their heads. When the Miss Twin Peaks contest devolved into chaos that evening, she was hit with a sandbag while a "tree" (perhaps one of the props adorning the stage) fell on him. Mike has come to his senses - after harboring some doubts about their relationship, he realizes that he truly loves Nadine. Leaning in for his kiss, he is shoved away by her. Unfortunately for Mike, Nadine has come to her senses in an entirely different way. Demanding to know who he is, pleading with Ed, "Make him leave!" she acknowledges that she is thirty-five and searches for the drape runners that obsessed her a few weeks ago. Her head injury has restored her to the identity she held before the attempted suicide, brief coma, and amnesiac awakening that lent her super strength and adolescent delusions. Her romance with Mike, it appears, is definitely over. "I'm sorry, Ed," Mike says softly, standing up from the couch and preparing to leave the house. "I guess I let things get a little out of hand."

Mike is one of our gateways into an aspect of the town that gets too little play: the social life of Twin Peaks High School (as opposed to the off-campus investigative endeavors of the high schoolers themselves). Through his eyes, we glimpse the effect of Bobby's charismatic braggadocio, while Mike's bullying abuse of Donna establishes one of Twin Peaks' persistent themes. Later, he embodies the wacky tone of mid-season two, as the arrogant jock becomes the hapless victim of Super Nadine. In the process, he also demonstrates the malleability of Twin Peaks' characters, how they can start one place and end up somewhere totally different - different in tone, personality, even physical appearance (once he accepts Nadine's overtures, Mike loses his near-ubiquitous letterman's jacket). And he exhibits one of Twin Peaks' most appealing qualities, even if many don't care for his particular example of it: the crossover possibilities of characters from totally different storylines. We haven't studied many figures who span the entire run of episodes. Mike is still a patchwork example of this - he's absent for over ten episodes in the first half of the series, but he does appear in just about every important section of the show: the mysterious, melancholy pilot, the fast-paced season one, the tense lead-up to the killer's reveal (just barely), the absurd Nickelodeon-style hijinks of mid-season two, and the building drama (often revolving round Twin Peaks) of the last stretch, and the offbeat, open-ended "resolutions" of the final episode. His character evolves accordingly with the spirit of each stretch, making him a particularly good barometer of where the show is at in a given moment.

So far we've discussed a couple characters with more than one arc. Few embody more radically different subplots than Mike, to the point where he almost seems like two different characters. Season one Mike is, unambiguously, an asshole. An insecure sidekick who vents at his girlfriend and follows his quarterback's every move, Mike is a high school punk involved with the drug trade and sneeringly disrespectful to solid adults like Doc and Ed ("Oh, Ed, I'm not your friend," becomes quite humorous in retrospect). Already by the next couple episodes, he's mellowing a bit - we might feel even a bit sorry for him as he realizes how in-over-his-head he is. But as his best friend spends more time with Shelly, Mike fades away, no longer needed to provide the necessary bouncing board for Bobby. His return in the killer's reveal episode serves a useful plot function (Bobby needs to talk about Leo's criminal history with someone, and he's never come clean about his involvement to Shelly). But it also works as a nostalgic nod to the early days of the show as it reaches its halfway point and gets ready to take a giant swerve.

Only with the Nadine relationship, which spans eleven episodes, does Mike really share a story he can call his own. While Nadine herself is the star, it wouldn't work (well, to the extent we accept that it does work!) without Mike to play off of. And because he's been established as a mean-spirited tough guy in the pilot, Nadine's seduction carries an extra comical punch. Imagine if they'd introduced some new hapless teen just for this purpose - it would feel quite different. Even before he begins dating Nadine, Mike is much more easygoing, even sympathetic, than he was as Bobby's partner; once he and Nadine become an item he's genuinely likable and fun (although a bit of the old Mike, in a different vein, sneaks through when he boasts to Bobby). It's a ridiculous development (and one that could be seen as problematic were it not handled in such a wacky vein), but one that's admittedly kinda grown on me the more I've watched the series (the hotel scenes, at least, are amusing). Then again, maybe repetition has simply worn down my resistance to Nadine's persona, as it apparently did for Mike himself.

Anyway, Mike shows up one last time for Fire Walk With Me, in a truly blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo (the moments is extended slightly in The Missing Pieces, but even there it feels more like a throwaway tribute than a truly integral appearance). As with much of the prequel, Lynch hits a reset and restores the teenage to his blustering, jockish appearance of the pilot albeit in a more overtly pathetic light as Donna turns down his rather meek offer to walk with her. Viewed chronologically, we can observe Mike's shift from the somewhat eager-to-please boyfriend to the more abusive figure of the pilot and wonder to what extent events of the intervening week and/or Laura's death transformed his attitude. Perhaps more interesting is how Mike is featured in Fire Walk With Me when he isn't onscreen, but we'll get to that.

Aside from the occasional film role (little in the past few decades, but he's listed as "College-age bishop" in Sneakers), Hershberger has appeared in a lot of TV over the years, including 21 Jump Street, Murder, She Wrote, Chicago Hope, The West Wing, The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, and Big Love. Twin Peaks was definitely his biggest part, but he also had a recurring role for a couple seasons of Six Feet Under as the owner of a corporate funeral home chain trying to buy out the central family. He has often participated in Twin Peaks commemorations and in 2015, when David Lynch temporarily left the Showtime series, Hershberger joined other cast members in a homemade video. "Twin Peaks without David Lynch," he declared, "is like a letterman's jacket...without the letter." He recorded the video in a game room, wearing a letter-less jacket himself, still evoking the Mike of early episodes even after the Nadine shenanigans of his later arc. Lately, Hershberger has been traveling around with Sheryl Lee (who played Laura Palmer of course) conducting a workshop called "The Actor's Director" in places like Los Angeles and Seattle in the past month or two. (series pictured: Six Feet Under, early 2000s)

Mike is written or co-written by Mark Frost in six episodes (one script is solo; collaborators for the others include David Lynch, Harley Peyton, and a Peyton/Robert Engels combo - Engels also co-writes Mike with Lynch in the film). Two of Peyton's solo scripts feature Mike (the funeral and the first Nadine kiss) and he collaborates on two more with Engels. Additionally, Mike is written three times by Barry Pullman. Mike is directed four times by Lynch, three times by Duwayne Dunham, and once each by Caleb Deschanel, Todd Holland, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, and Tim Hunter.

Mike is onscreen for roughly thirty-two minutes - the first entry in this character series to top a half-hour. He is in twenty-five scenes, another record (no one so far has even reached twenty), in twelve episodes (tying the Log Lady) plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection, taking place over about five and a half weeks. He's featured the most in the pilot, when he fights with Donna and tags along with Bobby. He appears most often at Ed's Gas Farm/the Hurley house. He shares the most screentime with Bobby (substantially more than with Nadine, despite their breadth of episodes). Mike's debut is auspicious; he is one of the top ten characters in the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, behind only Laura, Truman, Cooper, Donna, Bobby, James, and Sarah (all but one of whom would go on to be top ten characters of the series).




The Pilot: Lucy eavesdrops on Mike's conversation with Bobby and shares the transcript with Cooper, although he already realizes the video was taken by a biker. Donna's sister Harriet calls Mike "Mr. Bonehead Boyfriend." (Mike gets a lot of nicknames in this episode; not only does Bobby call him "Snake" - I can't believe I haven't mentioned that till now! - but the bikers at the bar snicker, "Mutt and Jeff just crawled in.")

Episode 3: When Cooper tells Truman about his dream with MIKE and BOB, Truman asks "Mike and Bobby?" Cooper tells him no - these are totally different individuals with the same names.

Episode 14: When Shelly presses for help with a vegetative Leo, Bobby tells her, "I can't keep telling my mom and dad that I'm spending the night at Mike's." (Oddly enough, Mike never interacts with Shelly, and only appears in one of her scenes.)

Episode 18: Donna and Nadine are talking about Mike in the school hallway before he walks by; Nadine asks if Donna is still seeing him because "there may be some major chemistry developing..." When he's gone, she marvels to Donna, "He has the cutest buns."

Episode 22: After seeing Ed and Norma in bed, Nadine tells them it's no big deal: "Now I don't feel so guilty about me and Mike. ... It's really, really serious."

Episode 23: Nadine tells Ed that she and Mike are in love and that "on the wrestling trip we had the most magical night together.""All night?" Ed marvels.

Episode 24: Dr. Jacoby and Ed talk to Nadine about her relationship with Mike and what it means for her and Ed. "One thing I really don't want to see, Ed," Nadine tells him, "are any incidents with Mike. No jealous rages. Well, maybe just one!"

Fire Walk With Me: As they relax in the Hayward living room, lying across the couch, Donna muses to Laura, "I wonder if Mike could ever write a poem." Laura starts giggling. When Bobby shoots Deputy Cliff Howard during a drug deal, Laura laughs and tells her drunk, high, and/or traumatized boyfriend, "You killed Mike!" He isn't amused, but as she keeps insisting that the dead man isn't Mike, he begins to wonder... "Is this Mike?"

The Missing Pieces: Donna tells Laura she's "thinking about doing it with Mike." Laura dismisses the idea, pointing out that Donna doesn't even like Mike but Donna argues, "this is about sex, not like." At school the morning after the shooting, Laura giggles again and teases Bobby: "You killed Mike!" He insists this joke isn't funny - someone really is dead because of him, and it isn't Mike.


• Different Mike. Different Bobby. Right? Putting aside some of the more out-there theories I've heard (that Bobby will show up in 2017 with long hair and a jean jacket), there are some cool little connections between the two Mikes. First of all, of course, as many have pointed out we can't really be sure which Mike Laura is referring to when she tells Bobby, "You killed Mike." Bobby is obviously thinking of his friend, but Laura's mind may be elsewhere (or, I should say, another place). Also an interesting coincidence (or more?): Nadine injures Mike's left arm in the penultimate episode. Other connections are discussed in a thread I started years ago. By far my favorite subtle, very Lynchian link is when Donna asks Laura, in an apparent non sequitur, "Do you think Mike could ever write a poem?" MIKE, of course, is introduced on the show reading his "fire walk with me" poem.

• Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer reveals how little Laura thinks of Donna's relationship with Mike. "The two of them remind me of a chewing gum commercial or something. 'Happiness and ambition, athletics and academics, rah, rah, rah." She also calls him a pig. "I don't like the way he looks at Donna either. I worry about her, because, he seems like such an asshole...thinking he's something of a superhero with his letter jacket on all the time. ... I just can't believe Dr. Hayward hasn't said something." She does not approve of Mike joining Bobby in the drug business, because she's afraid Donna will find out and tell on her. During an alienating visit to Donna a few months later, Laura learns that Donna wants to have sex with Mike and has even set a date for the deflowering. The next time she sees Donna, at the perfume counter, Laura's estranged friend expresses contentment with Mike.

• In Fire Walk With Me's script, Mike's dialogue with Donna is delivered at the high school instead of on the sidewalk; he snaps his fingers for her to come to him and, according to the scene description, "without missing a beat Donna changes direction. Mike has to hustle to keep up." In later deleted dialogue (when Donna shows up at Laura's house before she heads to the Road House), Laura asks Donna, "Isn't tonight the night you are going to do it with Mike?"

• In the pilot script, Mike and Bobby buy beer at a convenience store and sit in the car trying to figure out where to find James and/or Donna. James and Donna talk about Bobby and Mike in the woods, with James saying, "Those bastards! They were involved with this, I don't know how exactly..." He also mentions that on the night she died, Laura was screaming to him about "people she met through Mike and Bobby."

• In episode 1, Donna's mother was supposed to ask her about Mike, with Donna revealing that she and Laura made a pact to leave Mike and Bobby. The scene with Cooper talking to Mike and Bobby is split into two scenes, with each of them alone. Cooper tells Mike, "You don't seem like such a bad kid to me, but Bobby Briggs could drag you straight into hell." Mike is defensive as Cooper questions him, but he shuts up when he's told, "Settle down there, punk. I could make one phone call and you'd go so far away God couldn't find you."

• In a deleted interaction from episode 3, Donna runs into Mike at Laura's funeral and breaks up with him after he apologizes. According to the teleplay he is "shellshocked."

• As written, Mike did not have his own head injury in episode 29. After he kisses Nadine, she cries, "You try to stick your tongue down my throat and then, as some sort of explanation, you say your name is Mike? What the hell are you doing in my house, anyway?! ... Bullpucky. Take a hike, bozo." and tells Ed "this kid's trying to molest me." Mike doesn't deliver his final line and the whole scene is pitched in a more exaggerated, goofy style.


SHOWTIME: Yes, Hershberger is on the cast list for 2017. Maybe he'll come back with a beard and one arm (maybe Nadine broke something that was never treated and eventually the wound developed an infection and had to be amputated?). Doubtful of course, but what will Mike be up to? Will he have any relationship to Nadine? Or to Donna (who looks to be completely absent from the series)? Did he and Bobby remain good friends? Did they go completely straight and do they now work on the other side of the law? Or will Mike just pop up quickly at a convenience store or in the diner, a local whose legend has faded over time? "Hey, didn't that guy used to be the district wrestling champ?""Yeah, until that Hurley lady bodyslammed 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.

Chet and Sam divide the qualities of a good detective between them and can't quite sync up to figure out what's going on.


Friday, February 12, 1988
FBI Special Agent Chester "Chet" Desmond, cool, aloof, and collected, gets a call from his supervisor Gordon Cole while making an unusual bust in Fargo, North Dakota. Two prostitutes and a bus driver are getting arrested in a field (unusually green and sunny for a winter day in Fargo), while a school bus full of schoolchildren wails behind them. Chet takes the call on his car phone and has to lower his antenna due to the volume of Gordon's voice. He's told that a seventeen-year-old girl named Teresa Banks has been killed, and he's to meet Gordon at the private Portland airport. There, Gordon introduces Chet to FBI Special Agent Sam Stanley, a nebbishy young blonde man in a bowtie carrying a strange green contraption. "Sam cracked the Whitman case!" Gordon crows. Sam may have cracked Whitman, but he can't make heads or tails of Lil, the woman in a red dress and bright red wig whom Gordon invites onto the tarmac to perform a strange symbolic dance for the agents. When she finishes, Gordon sends them on their way to Deer Meadow, the small town in Washington where Teresa was killed.

On the drive over, Chet explains all of Lil's clues: sour face = local authorities won't be receptive to FBI; both eyes blinking = trouble higher up; hand in her pocket = they'll be hiding something; fist = they'll be belligerent; walking in place = lots of legwork; Gordon calling her "his mother's sister girl" and placing his fingers over his face (like prison bars) = sheriff or deputy with an uncle in federal prison; tailored dress = drugs. After this bout of ridiculously literal codebreaking, Chet withholds one secret: the blue rose pinned to Lil's dress. "I can't tell you about that," he states calmly. At the Deer Meadow sheriff's station, Lil's clues suggestions prove true - the sheriff, deputy, and receptionist are all surly, guarded, and mocking. As Sam sits in the waiting room, tapping his knee and mumbling/mouthing something to himself while he glances around the room, Chet forces his way into Sheriff Cable's office. When Deputy Cliff Howard tries to block him, Chet mesmerizes the deputy for a moment with a raised hand and then lunges for his nose, pinching and dragging it over to a chair where he shoves Cliff.

Cable doesn't require such physical violence...yet. After the sheriff snickers, "when the state boys called me about a J. Edgar coming up here, I think I told them so what," Chet reminds him that "the operative word is federal," forcing the smirking, almost demonic sheriff to hand over a box of Teresa's possessions and the attendant paperwork. "A basic kill," he grumbles. "Teresa was a drifter and nobody knew her." On his way out back to the morgue (essentially a wooden shed with a freezer installed), Chet glimpses a newspaper clipping on the wall: headlined "Cable bends steel", it shows the sheriff doing just that with a steel rebar. As Chet and Sam enter the morgue, Sam reveals his own findings: "You know, Agent Desmond, I figure this whole office, furniture included, is worth $27,000." Chet stares back in silence. Inside the morgue, Chet reads Teresa's file. "No one came to claim the body," he reveals. "No known next of kin." Sam conducts the physical analysis, determining that Teresa was beaten repeatedly over the head, noticing the impression of a ring on her dirty hand (though no ring can be found), and finally extracting a small piece of paper with the letter "T" from underneath her left ring finger with the help of Sam's contraption.

Leaving the morgue at three-thirty in the morning after an eleven-hour session, Chet and Sam head to Hap's Diner, where Teresa worked the night shift as a waitress. They question a man named Jack in an entryway and then talk with Irene, a waitress. She isn't much help (she speculates that Teresa's brutal murder was "what you might call a freak accident") but does reveal her suspicions about Teresa's cocaine use, as well as the fact that Teresa's left arm once went numb. The agents also, briefly, talk to an old man and a young French woman sitting at the counter whose only input (besides repeatedly asking "Are you talking about that little girl who got murdered?") is to declare "I know shit from shinola." Chet, growing annoyed with Sam's earnestly oblivious interjections, notices that Sam is holding a cup of coffee and asks him what time it is. Sure enough, Sam instinctively checks his watch and spills the coffee all over his lap while Chet chuckles and faintly apologizes.

Saturday, February 13, 1988
Chet and Sam bid farewell (nearly saying "Goodnight, Irene," as they were warned not to) outside the diner before driving over to Fat Trout Trailer Park at sunrise. They disturb the grouchy Carl Rodd, owner of the park, who escorts them to Teresa's trailer. The detectives take their time looking around her trailer; Chet discovers a photo of Teresa wearing a green ring, presumably the one removed just before her death. Carl shares a couple mugs of "Good Morning America," and the agents wince at coffee's taste - "This stuff's sure got the sting of the forty-eight hour blend," Chet remarks. As they're drinking, a woman wanders into the trailer with an icepack held to her eye. "Did you know Teresa Banks?" Chet asks, but she shuffles away in silence. Carl seems particularly spooked; he and Chet share a moment as he explains, "You see, I've already gone places...I just wanna stay where I am."

Chet and Sam return to the sheriff's station where an FBI van waits to move Teresa's body. Cable has other ideas: "You're not taking that body anywhere." When Chet tries to change the subject to Teresa's ring, Cable smirks ghoulishly: "We got a phone here. It's got a little ring." Chet gazes back, impassive. Clearly this is going to be resolved some other way. Out back, Chet and Cable remove their badges and prepare for a fight. Cable bends a steel rebar to show his prowess and when Chet reaches for hiw own, Cable blindsides him with a punch to the gut, followed by a kick that knocks Chet to the ground. It's the last shot he'll get in. Chet stands up, assumes a boxer's stance, and the two begin circling one another. A very methodical two-and-a-half-minute fight unfolds, in which Cable never lays a hand on Chet. Chet, on the other hand, after missing his first five punches, land twenty in a row - mostly to Cable's face. The last punch knocks a kneeling Cable to the ground as Chet declares, "This one's coming from J. Edgar." Then he finishes bending the rebar and tosses it aside.

Teresa is loaded into the van, but Chet tells Sam he's staying behind because he wants to follow up on something in Fat Trout. Sam nods and mentions the blue rose - "you're going back to the trailer park for the blue rose." As dusk falls on Fat Trout, Carl reminds Chet where he can find Teresa's and Cliff's trailers. But when Carl wanders off with a tenant, Chet's attention is drawn to the power lines overhead and a utility pole marked by the number "6". He turns around and heads toward another trailer in the corner of the park. No one responds to his knock and when he looks underneath the trailer he discovers a mound of dirt with Teresa's ring on top of it. He reaches for the ring...

Tuesday, February 16, 1988
FBI Agent Dale Cooper visits Sam Stanley's workshop to inquire after Chet (who has vanished) and he seems perturbed by a large tub churning a thick white substance. Sam is chatty but Cooper is curt, cutting him off when he asks if Gordon showed him a woman named Lil; "Stanley," Cooper says almost as a rebuke, "I'm up to speed." When Sam tells Cooper that Chet wouldn't explain the blue rose, Cooper serenely stares him down. "And neither will I." As Sam goes on about his machine that solved the Whitman case, an exasperated Cooper groans with his entire body. However, he is interested in the "T" found on Teresa. Sam recalls Chet fondly (repeating, for the second time, Gordon's declaration that Chet has his own M.O.) and shakes Cooper's hand, offering his services if they're ever needed.

Chet and Sam never visit Twin Peaks (Cooper makes damn sure of the latter point in the pilot; more on that below). Yet the Deer Meadow they visit in Fire Walk With Me is a twisted doppelganger of the TV series' town, with each location corresponding and inverting a place from the series in delightfully on-the-nose fashion (the yin/yang of the sheriff's stations and diners are obvious, but the trailer park may also be a rundown, open-air takeoff on the Great Northern). Chet and Sam themselves subvert Cooper's master detective by splitting and exaggerating his qualities. Chet is quiet intuition, picking up signals from the ether but unable to translate them. Sam's obsessive attention to detail and pedantic insistence on small points, helpful while analyzing a corpse, are comically useless in other circumstances. Chet and Sam crystallize the FBI's lack of power in Fire Walk With Me (a narrative in which the victim, not the detective, takes over) and letting the viewers know we're not in Kansas anymore. In fact, in Chet's case at least, this is the only time that a character's scenes form an entire solid chunk of narrative, no cuts between them. Chet is onscreen for twenty-six straight minutes of Fire Walk With Me, our guiding presence in virtually every moment; if we splice in his deleted scenes, the duration extends even further. Sam tags along, mostly existing in Chet's dramatic shadow even though he's the one who gets the most results from his endeavors. As a team, they provide an offbeat center to the even more off-kilter universe around them. They aren't familiar from the show, which is already a bit confusing, but we get whatever bearings we have by their side and when they disappear - literally in Chet's case - David Lynch is finally hammering home that he will provide no safe harbor.

Facing an interviewer as hostile as Sheriff Cable at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival (Geoff Andrew calls Fire Walk With Me "a deeply cynical exercise, a blatant attempt to cash in" and asks of Lynch "is there a sentient human being behind those obligatory threads?") Lynch attempted to explain what's going on in this prologue. "It's like opening a window and looking for a a moment; then closing it and asking someone to explain an hour's worth of scenario when they've only seen a small bit. It was like impressions a detective might get - a prologue of sensations, of feelings, of trying to capture something. The FBI doesn't have a clue what's happening, but they have their sensors going." The journey of Chet and Sam feels inseparable from the viewers' which is odd because, if we've watched the show, we already know more than they do...namely, who killed Teresa Banks. And yet we're led to believe this information is somehow insufficient - faced with the physical reality of this town and Teresa's corpse (so different from the almost angelic body of Laura discovered on the beach in Twin Peaks), "They made me kill that girl Teresa" rings hollow. Whatever's going on here run much deeper than that and so we tag along with Chet and Sam, just as confused but from a different angle.

Despite the many challenges and disappointments he faces, Chet doesn't feel diminished or exhausted at the end of his arc - he exhibits a consistently patient, maybe slightly frustrated curiosity from beginning to end. He arrives in town with a job to do, but no expectations, ready to receive whatever the town will yield and detect any openings he can move through when they appear. Sam provides the perfect foil for Chet's laid-back reticence, speaking when there's nothing to say, making plain his confusion in a way that only exacerbates it. These aren't people built for dramatic arcs; as Lynch's description so aptly evokes, they are receivers, not transmitters. When Chet disappears in Deer Meadow - an act reported later by Agent Albert Rosenfield and supposedly "represented" by the shot freezing and fading as he reaches for the ring - I don't see him taking a bold new leap into another realm (to the Lodge, for example, where most fans think he goes). I see his purpose within the narrative coming to an end. The ring has as yet been unknowable and Chet is not the one to know it (a task which must be left to Laura and the viewers on a more subconscious than conscious wavelength). So he, and we, must stop here. His journey has come to an end because it isn't really a journey at all; a journey requires a destination and there's no destination possible, that's the whole point.

One reading of the film holds that Cooper is dreaming the Deer Meadow sequence, reflecting back on an investigation he undertook and placing himself within the mysterious, quiet figure of Chet inside the dream (much as the protagonists of later Lynch films take on new personas to digest their own experiences). This makes some sense, especially considering that Chet Desmond ("CD" instead of "DC") was literally written into the script as a replacement for Cooper when Kyle MacLachlan initially refused to appear in the film. The majority of Cooper's dialogue was retained verbatim, which makes Chet's very different personality even more surreal in retrospect. Sam, meanwhile, was a character mentioned in the pilot; so most who subscribe to this theory would imagine Sam was Cooper's actual partner in the investigation. If I'm humoring this idea, however, I would prefer to think that Cooper visited Deer Meadow alone and that Chet and Sam represent a division of his personality into two spheres - the intuitive and the rational, which aren't quite getting along, and hence are unable to achieve satisfactory results. On the show, Cooper balances these dual detecting traits perfectly although as the series progresses, he tends to have more trouble, eventually splitting in two in the season finale (though that split doesn't necessarily correspond to an id/superego division).

Whether we read Chet/Sam as a literal or figurative representation of Cooper's duality, it's helpful to view them in relation to Cooper's successes and failures on the series, and his near-absence from Fire Walk With Me, especially the Laura part. Their journey is a dead end, as it must be, but sometimes dead ends can help us learn a better route. Perhaps more importantly, there's a certain moody, pleasurable aspect to many a cul de sac, isn't there?

Of German-Italian stock, from Stockton, California, Isaak was raised by a forklift-driver and potato-chip factory worker. He was elected class president through most of high school. Only after college did he launch his musical career, with his first album released by Warner Brothers when he was nearly thirty. David Lynch was responsible for much of his early placement on film soundtracks (a consistent element in Isaak's career; see also Married to the Mob, True Romance, and perhaps most famously "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing" in Eyes Wide Shut). Lynch was also responsible, somewhat indirectly, for Isaak's breakout as a star in the early nineties. His single "Wicked Game" debuted in 1989 and made a slight appearance in Billboard's charts, along with the album, before quickly disappearing. Then, a year later, a disc jockey who was also a major Lynch fan heard an instrumental version of the track in Lynch's film Wild at Heart. He was so impressed that he began played the vocal track in heavy rotation, and its popularity spread until the single soared back onto the charts, peaking at #5 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1991. Two music videos were created for "Wicked Game." One features clips from the film and is directed by Lynch. However, the second version is the one that became a sensation in its own right, for obvious reasons (see above). Isaak has continued acting, performing, and recording, sometimes combining his talents as in the The Chris Isaak Show, a comedic mockumentary about Isaak's backstage life which ran on Showtime for several years. (music video pictured: Wicked Game, 1991 - Isaak discusses its creation here)

Sutherland is the son of seventies New Hollywood icon Donald Sutherland (and grandson, via his mother, of the Canadian politician credited with bringing universal health care to Canada). He was already a prolific, successful actor around the time of Fire Walk With Me, a veteran of Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, Young Guns, and Flatliners, with an interesting range from nerdy shy guy (1969) to vicious heavy (A Time to Kill) and sometimes both (Freeway - in which, interestingly enough, the characters' destination is Stockton, the real-life hometown of Sutherland's Fire Walk With Me FBI partner) . In the zeroes, Sutherland became a TV superstar as Jack Bauer in 24, earning a higher salary than any other actor in television. If David Bowie is the biggest star associated with Twin Peaks, Sutherland may well be the second-biggest. Perhaps his most notable cinematic work since that period has been Lars von Trier's Melancholia, in which he plays the hyper-rationalist husband of Charlotte Gainsbourg. Sutherland is currently the lead on the network show Designated Survivor, in which he's the one member of the cabinet to survive a terrorist attack - a lowly official raised to the powers of the presidency in an instant. I had a bit of fun with this idea on Twitter recently. (film pictured: The Lost Boys, 1987)


Chet and Sam are totally the work of David Lynch and Robert Engels, since they only appear in the feature film. It's always hard to say who wrote what, but the characters feel like a genuine meeting of these particular minds. According to several participants, over the course of Twin Peaks, as Lynch's working relationship with Frost became strained, and he began clashing with writer/producer Harley Peyton (who was very close to Frost), Lynch and Engels grew ever more chummy. By all accounts, one of their essential bonds was a shared sense of humor. While Lynch/Frost collaborations also wacky comedy, I think the Lynch/Engels flavor tended more toward arch exchanges filled with throwaway references and belabored puns. The lines are potentially groan-inducing but delivered with such blank, unblinking conviction that they end up working, drying out the corn so to speak. (An example of a line that goes a bit too far and was cut from the film: "He's a bozo," Chet says; "Yes," Sam agrees, "he is like a clown.") So much of the Chet/Sam dynamic feels like an expression of this sensibility; I would imagine that this is the section where their talents most converged and fed off of one another.

I didn't want to bog down the already-long daily descriptions any more, but now that the entry's almost over, it's time to share some of Chet's and Sam's best exchanges. They have a dry, absurd patter that really bears the mark of Lynch and Engels.

"Remember Lil's wearing a sour face."
"What do you mean?"
(long pause, looks at Sam with faint disgust) "Her face had a sour look on it."

"Yes, I didn't realize so many hours had passed. Did you, Agent Desmond?"
(silence, looks at Sam and says nothing)
"You have your own M.O., don't you, Agent Desmond?"

"Sam, I think you and I oughtta see the sun rise at the Fat Trout Trailer Park."
(very earnestly) "Agent Desmond...are you talking to me in code?"
(staring into his eyes and speaking softly, in a manner totally polite yet just a hair away from passive aggressive) "No, Sam. I'm speaking plainly. I mean exactly what I said."
(oddly relieved and attempting to be amiable) "Oh. Okay, well in that case we should go to the Fat Trout Trailer Park."

"We sure do need a good wake-me-up, don't we, Agent Desmond?"
(no answer, Chet pleasantly glances at Carl and back at Sam with no apparent intent to answer, but then Sam only waits a couple seconds before repeating himself in the same tone and at the same clip)
"We sure do need a good wake-me-up, don't we, Agent Desmond?"
(slight cough, agreeable enough to throw this dog a bone, or maybe just cheerfully half-asleep) "Yeah we do, Sam!"
(Sam laughs, like he's just been patted on the head.)

Looking at these interactions, a certain dynamic emerges. If Cooper can barely disguise his contempt for Sam, Chet seems at times to have an vaguely condescending but sincere affection, or at least bemused toleration, for the eager-to-please (but also slightly lost-in-his-own-world) prodigy. Lynch and Engels really captured something sort of brotherly about their relationship, in the manner of say, a sixteen-year-old cool dude accommodating his bright-but-socially-awkward thirteen-year-old sibling as he tags along.

Chet and Sam are onscreen for roughly thirty-three minutes. They are in fifteen scenes in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces, taking place over a few days (but mostly within a day and a half). Their primary location is the Deer Meadow sheriff's station/morgue. Aside from each other, obviously, they share the most screentime with Cable. Collectively, they are second only to Laura in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces. Individually? Chet is onscreen for roughly thirty-one minutes, with fourteen scenes, and is still the second-ranked character of the film. Sam is onscreen for roughly twenty-four minutes, with thirteen scenes, and would be the fifth-ranked character of the film.



The Pilot: While examining Laura Palmer's corpse, Cooper finds a letter under her fingernail (in this case an "R"). Excitedly, he reports this discovery to Diane on his tape recorder, and then requests, "Diane, give this to Albert and his team. Don't go to Sam, Albert seems to have a little more on the ball."

Fire Walk With Me: After Phillip Jeffries mysteriously disappears from Gordon's office in Philadelphia, Albert makes a phone call to the front desk and reports that Jeffries never entered the building and adds something else he just learned: "News from Deer Meadow. Agent Chester Desmond has disappeared!" Gordon, after checking a surveillance tape to ensure that Jeffries really was on their floor, asks Cooper, "Where is Chester Desmond?" We linger on this shot for a few moments, and if you glance at the monitor in the righthand corner, a man who looks remarkably like Chet strolls toward the entrance of the building. Sure, the image is tiny and it could be any agent in the standard-issue trenchcoat, but something about the swagger instantly evokes Chet - and I've noticed several people draw this conclusion independently of one another. The proceeding scenes offer no indication Chet was found (quite the contrary), so I have no explanation but I like to think Lynch put it there on purpose, even if he himself can't explain.

In the following scene from the movie, Cooper visits the trailer park where Chet was last seen. He comes across an empty lot - which is where the trailer Chet was reaching under was parked and asks Carl who lives there. Carl reports that two different Chalfont families resided in that spot - "Weird, huh?" - one of whom was an old woman and her grandson; both details immediately reminds us of the two different Tremonds in the series (and sure enough, the grandmother and grandson are listed as both Chalfonts and Tremonds in the end credits). Cooper discovers Chet's abandoned car with a message painted on the windshield: "Let's rock" (either a message from the spirit world, or mundane teenage graffiti which later finds its way into Cooper's dream/spiritual life). Cooper reports his findings to Diane and admits the investigation has led to dead ends.


Deleted dialogue: When Gordon calls Chet, he tells him "GOT A MAP OF THE ENVIRONS OF YAKIMA INDIAN RESERVATION WITH YOUR NAME ON IT. BETTER BRING A POLE." When Chet tells Sam that Gordon speaks in code, he pulls his arm back so only his hand show above his sleeve and says, "Kind of a shorthand," a visual gag that Sam doesn't get. Sam asks what Gordon's tie meant, and Chet says it was just poor taste in fashion, not code. At the diner, when Irene introduces herself to them she says "Take a good look around - there's nobody in this place - you're meetin' the reason why." Chet asks her why Jack lets her work there and she informs him "Jack and I are united in holy matrimony.""Say no more," Chet replies. Irene informs them that Teresa applied for the job with a friend who looked like her ("could've been her sister") but there was only one job available so the other friend left.

At the trailer park, Carl also tells them Teresa had a friend with her who left ("Was there an argument?" Chet asks; Carl isn't sure but notes, "Arguments do happen, don't they?"). It is also revealed that Teresa rented the trailer from a Mrs. Simmons who lives in town. The agents talk about how they need to blow up the picture of Teresa's ring to make out more details, and Cliff shows up (he lives in the park) and gets into another argument with the FBI agents (this is discussed more extensively in Cliff's entry). Chet finds a golf ball underneath Teresa's trailer - interestingly in the finished film, Lynch chooses to avoid anything that might indicate Leland; obviously we know he did it but there's a weird feeling of disconnect between that knowledge and what we see of the aftermath in Deer Meadow. At the sheriff's station, Chet questions Cable about his own alibi (as he did with Cliff) and the sheriff challenges him to a fight - something we gloss over even in The Missing Pieces.

And then there's a very interesting change. In the script, Sam still says, "One thing has been troubling me." But he follows this up not with the blue rose, but with "The lamp at the diner. Do you think they were working on it for esthetic reasons or was their work due to faulty wiring?" Chet responds, "Faulty wiring," and Sam continues, "Esthetics are subjective, aren't they, Agent Desmond?" At this point, after shaking hands and saying the same thing he says to Cooper later, Sam does ask Chet if he's going back to the trailer park for the blue rose.


• In his book of cultural/political essays The Shape of Things to Come, published in 2006 when few writers in any field were discussing Fire Walk With Me, Greil Marcus devotes an entire essay to this film, titled "American Pastoral: Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer." The emphasis is obvious based on the title, he devotes several pages to Deer Meadow in one of the most evocative, exciting descriptions I've read, with particular emphasis on the above image...

"You begin to notice the state of the trailers. Except for Banks's, which has a white picket fence around it, they are decrepit, peeling, cracking, boarded up, abandoned. The residents are blind and crippled. This is the residential hotel as garbage drump, or the last frontier of what could be called a town, a place that deserves a California Gold Rush name: Rough and Ready or Confidence for irony, maybe, Hangtown or Sloughhouse for what it is. 

Desmond sends Stanley and the body off to Portland. With dusk coming on, he returns to Fat Trout, to check out the trailer where the sheriff's deputy lives, he says, though the way he walks and talks says something else. This is a place he cannot stay away from. It has a kind of gravity that can't be found anywhere else. The fact that there's another trailer in the place belonging to someone at least formally connected to the case is if nothing else an excuse to go back. 

The park operator banters with Desmond; then he walks a complaining woman with a stiff leg out of the frame, and for a moment Desmond occupies the center of a shot so perfect it becomes less a frame in a film than a painting on a wall, a painting that is also a door. Though the shot occupies a split second, in memory it can expand until it seems like an entire scene, as if everything the film has done with Desmond up to this point has been nothing but an excuse to get him here, standing exactly as he is. For its moment it is one of the most complete and uncanny images of America ever produced. 

Desmond is standing in the center of the picture, in his trenchcoat with his feet planted on muddy ground, framed off center by a line of smashed-together trailers and splintering shacks on this right, the line fading out in a receding perspective; the same sort of structures are on his left, but with less weight. The lanky FBI agent is himself the weight, the only anchor the shot has; the longer you look, freezing the frame, the more abstract it feels, the more everything feels as if it's floating off the ground. Earlier, showing Desmond around Fat Trout, the park operator had stopped, looking at a telephone pole as if it were alive, as if it were reminding him it will kill him if he tells what he knows. Now Desmond sees the telephone pole, though really the feeling is that it sees him. Behind Desmond is a desiccated fire tree; far beyond that are the purple mountains you know from 'America the Beautiful.' 

In the instant, a scene  from the country's founding plays itself out again, Fitzgerald imagining the first Dutch sailors to reach American shores: 'For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.' It's that contemplate that now fills Desmond's face - and if a trailer park can stand for a country and if Fat Trout is saying that the country has been abandoned, no one left but people who have reached its absolute dead end ('I've been places,' the park operator has said a minute before, begging the agent to accept his cowardice, to not ask why he doesn't want to talk, about Teresa Banks's murder or anything else: 'I just want to stay where I am'), the mountains that form the backdrop to the ruins around Desmond say what they have always said: there was no last time. The wonder that was there to be seen nearly four hundred years before, and two hundred years after that through the eyes of the Hudson River painters, is as visible now as it ever was; what has been used up is not the wonder, but the eyes of the people below the mountains, the country that set itself up in their shadow."

SHOWTIME: No, neither Isaak nor Sutherland are on the cast list for 2017. Sutherland's TV salary is, I'd imagine, way outside the Twin Peaks budget although he enjoyed his work on the film and reveres Lynch, so there's always a possibility he'd take a pay cut. He mentioned in a tweet last year that he was working on secret projects, so maybe his casting has been kept under wraps? Likewise, Isaak's absence from the cast list might conceal a surprise (if Lynch is going to be secretive about anyone, something tells me it would be these two). Brad Dukes looked into Isaak's touring schedule and noticed that he had a quiet month in the midst of his busy itinerary around the time Twin Peaks was shooting in L.A. Perhaps "Where is Chester Desmond?" will finally get an answer.

Or, hell, maybe it was all a dream after 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.

Annie returns to her troubled town, where her trauma began, in order to heal but her romance with a wise, kind, gentle man puts her in greater danger than ever.


Wednesday, March 22, 1989
A nervous Annie Blackburn, fresh from the convent, returns to the RR Diner in Twin Peaks. The restaurant is owned by her sister Norma Jennings, who has offered Annie a job as a waitress now that she's no longer a nun. Annie meets Shelly Johnson, Norma's employee and close friend, and Norma asks how their mother was. "Well, we could talk about her or we could feel good for a change," Annie jokes. "I vote for the latter." Later that day, getting used to her uniform and feeling her way around the business, Annie pours a cup of coffee for Dale Cooper, "local law enforcement." They hit it off, albeit in a slightly awkward way (especially on Annie's part, though Cooper seems charmed by her shyly brusque manner). Cooper notices a scar on her wrist but says nothing.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
Annie, looking much more relaxed and comfortable in her own skin, joins Cooper (now in a black suit; he is apparently an FBI agent) and Sheriff Harry Truman as they gaze out the window at a bird on a car. "Chickadee, on a Dodge dart," she confirms. Despite the way she's already grown into her job with a day's work, she confesses that she still feels weird and then laughs about her disregard for "the social niceties" ("I'm not really supposed to say how I am, I'm supposed to say, I'm fine, thanks, how are you?"). Truman smiles warmly as Cooper and Annie flirt without seeming to realize that's what they're doing. Cooper even tells her a goofy joke, interrupted when Annie has to help out Shelly at the counter: "Two penguins were walking across an iceberg. One penguin turned to the other penguin and said you look like you're wearing a tuxedo. ... And the second penguin said...maybe I am?" After lots of laughter and smiles, Annie notes that a design Cooper is sketching on a paper napkin looks like a marking on the wall of Owl Cave. That afternoon, Annie studies a poster for the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, left behind on the counter. Shelly teases her about signing up, and also about her life in the convent - "what's it like being back in civilization?" Annie gets a bit defensive, and Shelly apologizes, but they bond for a moment over the difficulty of being around men ("you don't have to spend time in a convent to feel that," Shelly chuckles). Annie asks about Cooper, and gets defensive again (in a more lighthearted fashion) when Shelly returns to teasing mode and tells her she's got a major opportunity. Annie visits the Great Northern Hotel in the evening, timidly ordering a rum and tonic at the bar. Cooper shows up, dressed in a black, and they chat amiably about Annie's fresh, almost childlike perspective on life and love after years spent away from the world. Cooper notices her scar again and this time Annie sees him looking; she explains she's made mistakes and Cooper offers his help despite her claims that she can be stubborn and strange, and doesn't always make sense or do what's expected.

Friday, March 24, 1989
On a visit to the diner to pick up coffee and donuts, Cooper asks Annie to join him on a late afternoon nature study. She agrees, and Shelly, clearly finding their interaction adorable, gives Annie a knowing look when Cooper leaves. Late afternoon finds the budding couple floating in a rowboat as ducks swim past. Annie explains some of her past, without wanting to go too much into detail: she was withdrawn while Norma was outgoing, the cuts on her wrist date from before she left for the convent but after she dated a boy in her senior year of high school, and she's returned to Twin Peaks - the site of that initial trauma - to face her fears. Cooper understands; he has his own traumatic experiences with fear and love, and again he vows to help her. They kiss. Annie realizes she doesn't know him well yet, but says her instincts advise her to trust him. They dock they boat and stroll ashore, embracing by the gazebo. They visit the diner in the evening and take a seat with Cooper's visiting supervisor, Gordon Cole, who is head over heels for Shelly; they smooch over cherry pie, disregarding Shelly's angry boyfriend as Cooper and Annie watch, delighted.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
Cooper notices Annie crumpling a Twin Peaks poster on the counter and encourages her to sign up. They quote St. Augustine and Heisenberg and confess that they've been thinking about each other all day. Annie invites Cooper to go bowling when she gets off work, but he suggests dancing instead. They meet at the Road House as it's being prepared for the upcoming pageant and Cooper shows her how to dance. They kiss again, several times, interrupted by the town mayor who is having trouble with his microphone. Annie decides to enter Miss Twin Peaks after all and tells Cooper that she feels safe and unafraid with him.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Norma, who will be judging the contest, excitedly prepares for Miss Twin Peaks. She says it will help heal the community this year and Annie speaks the unspoken: "You mean Laura Palmer?" (Laura is a teenager who was murdered a month ago.) Later that morning Annie practices with a choreographer at the Road House before visiting Cooper at the Great Northern to practice her speech. They end up making love instead. That evening, the pageant in full swing, Annie dances with a chorus line and then returns to the stage for a speech in which she quotes Chief Seattle and suggests that to appreciate and safeguard nature we must begin by taking care of ourselves. The judges and audience members are clearly moved and when Doc Will Hayward declares the winner at the end of the night, Annie takes center-stage. Crowned as Miss Twin Peaks, holding a bouquet, her moment of triumph dissolves into disaster when the lights go out and a strobe starts blinking. Amidst explosions and screams, Doc leads her offstage before disappearing into the mist. Annie moves through the darkness, trying to find Cooper, but she is seized from behind by a deranged madman dressed as a woman. He drags her away and they drive into the forest, where (changed into a black suit) he declares with frenzied glee, "I am Windom Earle ... I do like the fear I'm feeling." Bashing her head against the back window of his stolen truck a few times, he pulls her through the woods as she recites a psalm. Insisting that Cooper will save her and resisting Windom, only when he yanks her inside a circle of twelve sycamore trees does Annie straighten up, her eyes glazed over as she calmly follow Windom inside the red curtains that materialize in Glastonbury Grove.

"Who's Annie?" one of the many apparitions of Annie asks Cooper inside the Black Lodge. Indeed, who is Cooper seeing? One individual masked as another? The real Annie? A hallucination invoked by Windom Earle? For that matter, what is Annie seeing? She rises from the floor in a flowered dress (worn by Cooper's dead lover Caroline a moment earlier), blood dripping from her mouth, looking around as Cooper calls out to her...though she is lying next to another Cooper at the same time. She tells him "I saw the face of the man who killed me. It was my husband." And she wobbles behind and in between Windom and Cooper before fading into the red curtains.

Monday, March 27, 1989
The night after she entered those curtains, Annie and Cooper materialize in Glastonbury Grove. Truman rushes to their sides: both are unconscious, and Annie is covered in blood as she was in that first Lodge appearance. Rushed into Calhoun Memorial Hospital, Annie's eyes are open but she is unresponsive.

Annie lies in Laura Palmer's bed. She sits up slightly and calmly states her name, offering Laura a clue as to Cooper's whereabouts before laying down again.

back on Monday, March 27, 1989 (early morning hours of the next day)
Five weeks later, and yet simultaneously, Annie is in the hospital offering this same statement and command. She doesn't quite seem to be present in this moment. Her only witness is a nurse more curious about the green ring on Annie's finger, which she takes, checks in the mirror, and trots away with, as Annie lays wearily in the bed, unable to speak or move, looking lost and exhausted.

Annie's arrival is well-timed. She shows up right as the mid-season slog transforms into the late season rebound - indeed, if we accept there is a rebound she must be partially responsible for it. With the scattered, tedious post-Laura subplots finally resolved, Twin Peaks hits its stride by organizing much of the material around four poles: the upcoming Miss Twin Peaks contest, Windom Earle's threats to the town and Cooper, the uncovering of the Lodge lore, and the romance of Annie and Cooper. Because the other three are essentially awaiting a big climax, that romance has to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting. For some viewers, Annie is a very poor substitute for Audrey (who was originally planned to be Cooper's lover, until Kyle MacLachlan objected on controversial grounds and a replacement had to be found). To them her character's entrance feels hasty, her offbeat quirks contrived, her backstory conveniently vague, her appearance generic. "Worst of all," Lynch scholar Martha Nochimson grumbles, "Cooper was given a plot hinging on a formulaic romance with a cliched, flaxen-haired sweetheart that threatened to turn him into a stereotypical action hero. Adding insult to injury, he was outlandishly, infuriatingly scripted to describe this central-casting ingenue as 'the most original human being' he had ever met." Many critics have wistfully imagined a powerful alternative to what exists; what if twenty-nine episodes of smoldering chemistry and dangerous affection between the show's star pairing led to this final statement of the series, as Cooper cackles at his BOB reflection... "How's Audrey?"

For other viewers, even those who wish the Cooper/Audrey connection found a way to continue, there is something oddly charming about Cooper's romance with Annie. Her character is just unusual enough to duck Nochimson's dismissal (some of her lines, and deliveries, are truly bizarre in ways that range from convincingly asocial to directorially misguided). The coupling is cute and if the storyline pushes Cooper toward a more standard love-interest role in some ways, in others it opens up the childlike aspects of his personality (with Audrey he was always very much the adult, sometimes threateningly so; with Annie he's often a fellow innocent). The two share a sense of wonder and delight in the world around them and there's a different sense of unease than we get with Cooper and Audrey, one more spiritual than social, even if Windom's stalking and kidnapping externalizes the threat. Cooper's fondness for the emotionally delicate ex-nun highlights both his and her fragility. From this perspective, their connection is particularly potent in the first few episodes, during their rather bumbling flirtations. God help me, I belong to this second camp, enjoying the Cooper/Annie romance and liking Annie herself even as I understand her detractors.

By arriving in Twin Peaks as someone who has a history there, but is also seeing it with fresh eyes, Annie fuses both halves of the early series: the town's deep-rooted mysteries, traumas, and habits, as well as Cooper's excited appreciation of its pleasures and investigation of its secrets. She helps restore a sense of identity and community to Twin Peaks after many episodes in which the location is treated like the convenient setting for any other series, less a character itself than a backdrop for various pratfalls and soapy shenanigans. Annie's addition to Twin Peaks, then, can be seen as the embodiment of late season two's "springtime" (a seasonal change which Annie's episodes actually correspond to, with both in-world chronology and airdates in '91). Opening the windows and doors to air out a stale room, she can't completely erase the stink or bring back what was there before, but it's a refreshing improvement nonetheless.

When Annie walks into the diner, she is initially part of Norma's - and even Shelly's - story, not Cooper's, although that quickly changes and anyone with their wits about them can see it coming. Even as this main plot charges forward (she meets Cooper halfway through the week, declaring her love and sleeping with him before the weekend is over), the writers still allow Annie everyday moments at work. These are some of her most enjoyable scenes. We watch as a testy, uncertain, but affectionate relationship develops between her and Shelly - each is slightly jealous of the other's connection to Norma. Shelly can be mocking, and Annie can be standoffish, but this potential tension eventually resolves itself as playful rivalry: arms around each other, the waitresses tease Norma by asking who she'll choose in the contest. And when Annie wins Miss Twin Peaks, Shelly seems genuinely enthusiastic. Unlike many stories where a man drives a wedge between two women, Annie's attraction to Cooper, if anything, draws her closer to the enthusiastic, joshing Shelly (whose comparative worldliness may assist her own confidence at a time when she's feeling otherwise insecure).

Annie's romance with Cooper is, of course, her primary arc, going hand-in-hand with the unraveling of her past, though we never move very far in that direction. The moments in their relationship are roughly divisible into two types: several scenes in which they happily flirt and innocently tiptoe around their mutual attraction, and several scenes in which Cooper takes on a protective, nurturing role, listening to Annie as she expresses her fears and desires. The first type of scene usually takes place at the diner, while the second type occurs elsewhere (in the hotel bar or the Road House, on a lake, in Cooper's room); without one suddenly giving way to the other, the latter approach does gradually crowd out the former. Annie's personal climax is achieved at Miss Twin Peaks when she discovers the confidence to deliver a strong speech, one which joins her own personal crisis to a larger purpose, re-connecting her to the community she abandoned and always retreated away from.

Following this triumphant moment, Annie becomes little more than a damsel in distress; entering the Lodge, she is even caught in a kind of spell which erases any last measure of personality from her expression. She is a tool for Windom, bait for Cooper, and a guiding spirit for Laura, but any active narrative ends before her tragedy begins. This adds a final bite to the question "How's Annie?" and begins a process of erasure that has only escalated in recent Twin Peaks material.

Graham is one of the more famous cast members - certainly when I watched the show in 2008, she and Billy Zane were two of the few I recognized. In fact, I'm always a bit surprised when Twin Peaks viewers describe her as a character actress or "that woman who was in (such-and-such)"; to my mind she achieved stardom in the late nineties. That said, it is true that she often appeared in secondary roles rather than leads. Graham's career stretches back to the eighties, when she was still in her teens (playing Corey Haim's girlfriend in License to Drive, for example). In fact, she had a small part in possibly the first live-action film I ever saw in theaters as a four-year-old - in an introduction taking place decades before the rest of the film, she makes a cameo as Arnold Schwarzenegger's and Danny De Vito's mother in Twins. The following year she had a memorable supporting role in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy and eight years later she landed perhaps her most iconic character in another maverick auteur's breakthrough: Rollergirl in Boogie Nights. Her resume reads like a rundown of quintessentially nineties fads and phenomena (all that's missing is a Tarantino film): Twin Peaks and Boogie Nights of course, but also Swingers and sequels to Scream and Austin Powers, along with notable titles like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Six Degrees of Separation, Nowhere, and Two Girls and a Guy. Graham was definitely a fixture in the nineties cinema scene, varying between indies (in the little-seen Don't Do It, she co-stars with Twin Peaks alums Sheryl Lee and James Marshall) and big-budget spectacles like Lost in Space. (Graham had signed for a Lost in Space franchise but the film flopped; that said, it does hold the distinction of knocking Titanic from its record fifteen-week run as #1 at the box office). Graham also developed a comedic persona, replacing Elizabeth Hurley as Austin Power's love interest in The Spy Who Shagged Me and cast as a youthful bombshell in the Hangover films when Lindsay Lohan (sixteen years her junior) turned the part down. While her film career took off, Graham initially avoided TV, but she later alternated between hit TV shows and films, appearing in Sex and the City (as herself), Arrested Development, Scrubs, and Californication (the latter two recurring roles). She was the lead on the short-lived Emily's Reasons Why Not. To date, Graham now has appeared in close to a hundred films and TV shows. (film pictured: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, 1999)


Annie's introduction and climax (at the Miss Twin Peaks contest) are written by Barry Pullman. The rest of her episodes are authored by various combinations of Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels (I'm guessing the penguin joke Cooper tells her is all Engels). Engels also collaborates with David Lynch to write her out-of-body experience in Fire Walk With Me. Annie is directed by James Foley, Duwayne Dunham, Jonathan Sanger, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Tim Hunter, and David Lynch (twice - in the finale and film).

Annie is onscreen for roughly thirty-six minutes. She is in twenty scenes in six episodes plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection, taking place over six days. She's featured the most in episode 28, when she wins Miss Twin Peaks. Her primary location is the RR Diner. She shares the most screentime with Cooper. She is one of the top ten characters in episodes 27 and 29, one of the top five characters in episodes 25 and 26, and second only to Cooper in episode 28. She has more top ten appearances than anyone else in the character series so far.




Episode 23: Norma speaks to Annie on the phone, inviting her to the diner - "Just get on the next bus, and I'll be waiting." Ominously, as Annie enters the show, we see a disguised Windom grinning in the foreground; he leaves a tip and an envelope for Shelly and walks out of the diner. From Norma's end of the conversation, it sounds like Annie is upset. When she hangs up, Shelly asks, "So your sister's coming?" She also laughs: "God, what do you have to do to get out of a convent?" Norma says it's not a prison and Shelly jokes about it sounding like one: no TV, no boyfriends. Norma's next observation has a different resonance in 2017 than it did in 1990: "You know, when she was little I always used to think that Annie was from another place and time."

Episode 26: Cooper discusses love with John Justice Wheeler (who, ironically, has taken up with the character originally intended for Cooper). Annie's name is never mentioned but obviously Cooper has her in mind when he says, "I feel like someone's taken a crowbar to my heart. ... I think maybe it's been locked away long enough."

Episode 27: Cooper tells Truman he's thinking about Annie, adding "I've been feeling this way all day. I proceed as usual, my mind clear and focused. And then suddenly out of nowhere I see her face and I hear her voice. Naturally, I try to re-orient myself, come back to the task at hand but the image remains. Sometimes I actually feel dizzy." Cooper compares his symptoms to malaria but says he's never felt better. Truman wistfully tells him he sounds lucky. Then, as Cooper gazes out the window his hand begins to tremble.

Episode 28: Cooper's very last report into his tape recorder refers to Annie: "Diane, at this particular juncture, I want to make specific mention of Annie Blackburn. She is a completely original human being, her responses as pure as a child's. I must be honest, I haven't felt this way about a woman since Caroline. It has taken meeting Annie for me to realize how gray my life has been since Caroline's death, how cold, solitary -" (interrupted by a knock, which turns out to be Annie) "- although occasionally, there is something to be said for solitude."

Episode 29: Cooper and Truman study a copy of the Owl Cave petroglyph on the sheriff's station blackboard. It's an esoteric map to Twin Peaks which guides them to Glastonbury Grove (nearby they find the truck Windom stole to take Annie there). Cooper tells Truman he must go on alone and Truman watches in awe as the red curtains materialize, and Cooper enters in pursuit of Annie. A day later, Cooper awakens in the Great Northern and immediately asks, "How's Annie?" He's told that she is fine, but is over in the hospital. Cooper goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and once he's alone he squeezes the tube of toothpaste into the sink and smashes his head in the mirror. Staring at the reflection of BOB, he cackles mercilessly, over and over, "How's Annie? How's Annie? How's Annie?"

The Missing Pieces: Cooper re-enters the area of the Red Room(s) where he told Laura "Don't take the ring." This time, however, the ring is not on the table. Cooper notices and asks after it, to which the Man From Another Place replies, "Someone else has it now.""Annie?" Cooper wonders. "Annie!"


• In deleted dialogue from episode 26, Annie tells Cooper more about what drove her to the convent. "Everybody here thought I was nuts. And when I think about it, it was such a weird nineteenth century thing to do. To think I could remove myself, as if that could stop the noise in my head, when the problem was me, it was always in...me ... Silence. Prayer. It wasn't the religion. It could have been a Buddhist retreat. Walden Pond. A quiet room."

• The diner scene in episode 28 was originally extended to include Cooper walking in and complimenting Annie, predicting that she will win. Before kissing her, he says, "I know this violates multiple laws of physics, but at this moment, Annie, and I mean this quite literally...you are the only person in this room." During the dance rehearsal, Annie tells the others, "This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen."

• If you think the existing Cooper/Annie love scene is hard to take, with its extended forest metaphors, get a load of the script. The entire exchange is twice as long. "To be honest," Annie admits, "that's not really why I'm here. The speech.""The way I feel transcends metaphor," Cooper helpfully contributes. "Obliterates it." Annie inquires, "How do you feel? I mean, usually. I only ask because...well, actually, I want to know." In what the scene description aptly calls an "analytic detour," Cooper explains, "My habit is to construct and control my emotions with great precision. Everything ordered and in its place. What I am feeling now has steamrollered every barrier I've ever, if you'll excuse the expression, erected. [har, har] I don't know what I know or don't know. I only know ... (happily jumbled, he sighs) I want to make love with you, Annie. That's all I know." Believe it or not, the dialogue keeps going, and it takes them four more lines to get in bed, including Annie's declaration, as she unbuttons her blouse, "I am eager...and full of grace."

• Clearly someone sent a memo that Cooper's and Annie's love was to be hammered relentlessly in this penultimate episode because there's a third deleted passage where they declare their feelings yet again. Exiting the sheriff's station together, Cooper comments, "I'm just not used to feeling such discord between my professional and personal concerns." Kissing him goodbye, Annie says, "My heart will start beating again when next we meet. My knight in shining armor."

• The teleplay for episode 29 is radically different from the episode Lynch directed, especially in the Lodge sequence, although it's evident earlier on as well. Windom is far more verbose in his scene with Annie, although most of her lines are intact. However, when she approaches the Lodge rather than becoming mesmerized upon entering the circle of trees, she is visited by a vision of a Mother Superior. Annie approaches her, only for the nun to transform into Windom, who grabs her and pulls her inside the Lodge. For the most part, the Lodge is not the Red Room but that iconic setting does make one appearance, with a cartoonish sign dropping from the ceiling that reads "Pittsburgh, stupid!" Annie stands at the sink of a kitchen area inside the Red Room, although Cooper initially thinks she's Caroline. As her proceeding statements clarify, this is Caroline (she talks about Windom being the one who kidnapped her), even though she looks like Annie. This blends into the dialogue actually featured in the finale. The shot of Annie lying next to a bloody Cooper in Caroline's dress is coupled with a re-enactment of Windom reporting his wife's murder to the police. In a throne room/doctor's office, Windom shows Annie trapped behind glass inside a cabinet, where she watches the rest of the scene. In fact, out of the entire Black Lodge sequence of the script, the images of Annie may come closest to what Lynch actually ended up using even though he abstracted them more than the writers.

• After the series ended, Harley Peyton responded to a series of questions from hyper-fans on the alt.tv.twin-peaks Usenet board. One question was about the nature of Annie: was she an agent of the Lodges? Peyton's answer illuminates much more than just that simple question. "The speculation about Annie is interesting, but again, incorrect. Sad to say, Annie was -- at least when the character was initially conceived -- a damsel in distress. And not a great deal more than that. However, had the show continued, we might have deepened her connections/past/significance, etc. And she might well have become an Agent from the White Lodge -- it's a very good idea. But as it stood, and given that we never had that third season to continue, she was out of neither the Black nor the White Lodge."

•  Annie is never mentioned in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks, although it frequently discusses Norma's family life (she has a completely different mother on the page, who dies long before 1989). The book covers the events of the series, including Cooper's entrance into and emergence of the Lodge. And yet still...no Annie. Maybe Cooper's "How" should be a "Where"?


SHOWTIME: No, Graham is not on the cast list for 2017. This, plus the book, is an ominous sign for many Annie fans. Additionally, at reading events, Frost has taken to referencing Lana, of all people, as the winner of the Miss Twin Peaks contest. What's going on here? A retcon? A cover-up? Whether or not Graham makes a secret appearance, Annie's legacy must play some role in the new series. Twenty years ago, when it seemed improbable that Twin Peaks would ever return, David Lynch shared his thoughts on Annie's final moment with Chris Rodley:

"Although I don't really like talking about things, I've got to say this one thing about that scene - where Annie suddenly appears in Laura's bed. This is before Laura has been murdered, and before Cooper has come to Twin Peaks. Annie appears, filled with blood, and wearing the exact same dress that she's wearing when she was in the Red Room with Cooper in the series - in the future. She says to Laura, 'The good Dale is in the Lodge. Write it in your diary.' And I know that Laura wrote that down, in a little side space in her diary. 

Now, if Twin Peaks, the series, had continued, someone may've found that. It's like somebody in 1920 saying, 'Lee Harvey Oswald,' or something, and then later you sort of see it all. I had hopes of something coming out of that, and I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in 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.

Dick aspires toward the role of small-town sophisticate, but his absurdity keeps his pretension in check.


Sunday, March 5, 1989
Dick Tremayne, of Horne's Department Store designer menswear, arrives at the Twin Peaks sheriff's station looking dapper - if a cravat beneath a flannel shirt, blue blazer, and overcoat draped over his shoulders counts as dapper. He checks his reflection in a glass partition, blithely ignoring the "No Smoking" sign right in front of him as he places a cigarette in his elegant holder. It is immediately broken by the nonplussed Deputy Hawk Hill but Dick rolls with the punches. Lucy Moran, the sheriff's receptionist, invited him over and he agrees to a lunch date at the RR - "let's go Dutch," he smiles with his Cheshire grin, feeling generous today. At the diner Dick enlightens Lucy with the various alphabetical organizations he applies to his stock in menswear, but her concerns lie elsewhere. Lucy reminds Dick that they dated for several months (dates which would usually begin with a promise of dinner at the Space Needle in Seattle and end instead with family night at Pancake Plantation and a romp on a display bed at the department store). Yet he hasn't called in six weeks - why? Dick has just the idea to patch things over: he will let her use his 20% discount at Horne's! That does it. A peeved Lucy cuts to the chase: she's pregnant.

Monday, March 6, 1989
Dick gallantly strides into the sheriff's station the next evening, ducking out of a thunderstorm to declare how ashamed he is, how determined to do the right thing. Lucy is impressed by his willingness to take care of her - until she realizes his noble monologue is prelude to handing her an envelope full of money that she can use to "take care of the little problem." Lucy very firmly and specifically explains to Dick how he can leave the station and never speak to her again. He complies.

Saturday, March 11, 1989
By the following weekend, however, Lucy has changed her mind. Dick returns to the station and sits in the conference room with Lucy and Deputy Andy Brennan, with whom Lucy has also been conducing a romance. She isn't sure which beau is the father, and won't be able to tell until a post-birth test. For now, she expects the two to act as prospective fathers since it could be either one. The two men comply, with Dick practically yawning, "After all, it is your baby." The smoke from his cigarette holder drifts up near a smoke alarm on the ceiling.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Dick is feeling whimsically gentlemanly again and he wants Lucy to know he's had a change of heart. The pregnant woman is teetering at the top of a ladder, attempting to insert a large light fixture, almost falling several times as Dick acknowledges how he has been too self-absorbed and wants to be of assistance to someone. He explains that, as a sort of fatherhood training, he has signed up for the Happy Helping Hands agency to be big brother to a little orphan. Andy joins the conversation to tell Dick that he wants them all to get along so that things will be easier for Lucy. She is impressed by this statement and almost kisses him, but Andy shakes Dick's hand instead.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Dick walks into the station at lunchtime, arm around Little Nicky Needleman from the agency. The boy is excited to be having ice cream at the diner and crushed when Dick tells him they'll have to wait for another day - the woman he was hoping to impress has the day off and Andy is manning reception. Andy intervenes to say he'll pay for lunch, and if Nicky is delighted, Dick looks less so. At the diner, Nicky blows the whipped cream from his sundae in Dick's face, and spins Andy's seat at the counter, sending the deputy flying to the floor. Each mentor thinks the other's mishap is hilarious; less so, their own.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Lucy, Dick, and Andy meet with a representative from Happy Helping Hands at the station. She tells them that Nicky has suffered all his life from a persistent random misfortune - namely his real parents and then his foster parents died. Dick looks concerned. That afternoon, with Andy elsewhere, Dick takes Nicky on an excursion in the countryside and is forced to change a tire while Nicky sits in the driver's seat and loudly beeps the horn. When the car nearly collapses on top of Dick, Nicky - standing nearby - rushes in to embrace him, pleading, "Please don't die!" A thought crosses Dick's face. He rushes into the sheriff's station that evening, ignoring Lucy completely and offering Andy a horrifying suggestion: "I believe that Little Nicky, incredible as it may seem, may in fact be the devil!" From devil to angel: within minutes, Dick's attention is absorbed by Lana Milford, the recent widow of Dougie Milford, whom the sheriff is comforting in his office. Dick, Doc Will Hayward, Andy, Hawk, and Sheriff Harry Truman moon over Lana as she tells corny stories. None of them notice Lucy when she wanders into the room and then angrily exits, slamming the door behind her.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
Attempting the look of a trenchcoat/fedora-clad supersleuth but coming off more like Kermit the Frog in reporter mode, Dick sneaks into the station and whispers his plan to Audrey. He's already snooping around the Happy Helping Hands organization, "where several blue haired ladies were only too happy to sup from my open palm," learning that Nicky's files are located at the Dorritt Home For Boys. Dick and Andy arrive at the orphanage during the lunch hour and Dick rifles through a filing cabinet until he finds what he's looking for. At that point, a cheerful couple arrives to adopt their foster son and Dick is forced to improvise: "Little Donnie is...dead." The parents are horrified and he is forced to keep winging it: "...Dead tired, I mean!"

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Lucy and Doc Hayward shove Dick and Andy into the sheriff's office. The two men try to explain why Little Nicky killed his own parents (Dick apparently has revised his apocalyptic vision to one more earthbound if no less sinister). However, Doc cuts them off with a tearjerking story about how Nicky was conceived in a "backalley assault," his mother died in birth and was buried in Potter's Field, and his foster parents died in an accident on an icy highway, where the six-year-old managed to pull them from their burning cars but couldn't save them. Dick and Andy weep with shame and their adventures with Little Nicky end (under the assumption the poor lad is better off without their intervention, perhaps).

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Dick prepares to host the Stop Ghostwood Fashion Show at the Great Northern Hotel; ogling models, he is interrupted by Audrey Horne, who gives him instructions, and Tim Pinkle, who will be presenting a stuffed pine weasel as the mascot for the show's ecological endeavors. Dick thinks this is a bad idea, so that evening - after he's announced and narrated several models' walks down the runway - Dick welcomes Pinkle to the stage with a live pine weasel. The creature is attracted to Dick; Pinkle, who doesn't get along with the host (earlier that day, Dick snapped at Audrey, "What's a Pinkle?") suggests it is drawn to very cheap cologne. Whatever the case may be, the weasel eventually sinks its teeth into Dick's nose, hanging on as the victim lurches up and down the runway, screaming. Dick eventually rips the wild animal loose and tosses it into the crowd. Pandemonium ensues.

Friday, March 24, 1989
Dick tenderly massages his bandaged nose while chatting with Ben Horne in the Great Northern, which Ben owns (along with the department store where Dick works). Dick is preparing a charitable wine-tasting event for the evening, but Ben is concerned with his injury, telling him that his medical bills will be covered; the eager employee presses for workman's comp too. Hours later, Dick - his swaddled nose purple from leaning too far into his glass - hosts an "oenophiliac soiree." He yells at Andy when he sips to soon, brushes off Lucy's input, and swoons over everything Lana says and does. Finally Lucy spits a stream of wine all over his face, reminding him that she's pregnant and isn't supposed to be drinking.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
As the Miss Twin Peaks pageant approaches, Dick confers at the Road House with the other two judges, Mayor Dwayne Milford and Norma Jennings. Asked for his preferred criteria, he cites "poise and, God help us, a sophistication...and breeding." Lana saunters and practically drags Dick into a supply closet where she seduces him under pretense of looking for "a very important prop." That night, a satiated Dick enjoys a parade of beautiful young women - including both Lana and Lucy - as they dance and speechify their way across the stage. (During a break, Lucy meets with Andy and Dick to inform them that she has chosen Andy as the father; Dick couldn't care less and rushes back to his duties.) Dick is certainly impressed by Lana's dance, but he is most moved by Annie Blackburn, a young woman who delivers a sensitive oration about nature and self-care. He joins Norma to select her as the winner. The mayor is infuriated, but Dick defends his decision: "She gave a beautiful speech. Inherent in her message were words even the most craven of us can ill-afford to ignore."

Dick Tremayne is certainly indicative of a certain something in Twin Peaks. For some fans, he's a prime example of season two's wayward drift; how did we get from the murdered body of Laura Palmer to a posh, pompous British buffoon debating his own paternity? Indeed, Dick is one of the most sitcom-y characters on Twin Peaks, providing an indication that absurdist surrealism will not be the show's only comedic vein. And other fans love that. In recent years, Dick has risen in many fan's estimations due to his celebration on podcasts like Diane... (where his fellow UK'ers can't help but adore his floridly foolish shenanigans) and perhaps especially the original Twin Peaks Podcast, where he became a kind of cult figure thanks to one host's devotion to his caddish comic relief (a song was even composed, as I recall). If you can accept and even embrace Twin Peaks' campy side, its willingness to wallow in a very earthbound, self-aware and self-indulgent mockery of human foibles, that Dick Tremayne is an absolute delight. Few would deny that Ian Buchanan plays the part perfectly, rolling the intonations across his tongue and controlling every facial tic with the sustained sensitivity of a ventriloquist who is his own dummy. That said, many viewers are still very much in that first, hostile group, and it doesn't help that Dick is connected to an endless stream of Twin Peaks' least interesting events and subplots: the paternity question, the Little Nicky hijinks (the thought balloon he inspires in Andy may be the show's lowest point), Lana Milford's seductive witchcraft, the fashion show/pine weasel riot, the tedious Miss Twin Peaks stage show...even the relatively inoffensive wine-tasting suffers in comparison with the unforgettable Shelly/Gordon kiss, which (split into two scenes) it bookends. As someone who was very much in the first camp, but has learned to appreciate the tastes of the second (in small doses), I think it's fair to say that "Dick Tremayne" is a superb performance of a memorably irritating character in a lot of bad stories.

Dick never really grows (sorry; this one, at least, was honestly unintentional). Unless, that is, we think Annie's speech truly transforms him (me, I suspect within minutes he's trampling old ladies and children to escape the chaos Windom unleashes). Dick's charm, if that's the right word, lies in the sweet spot between slyly posh elegance and ludicrous bad taste, haughty intelligence and incredible obliviousness, a superficially gracious manner and the pettiest vanity imaginable. The character has more (small) storylines than anyone so far; each except Miss Twin Peak ends with a comeuppance. Lucy drives him from the station in a fury after he presumes she wants to abort; Doc scolds and shames him after validating Nicky's victimhood; the pine weasel, with Pinkle's enthusiastic encouragement, chomps on the snobbish M.C.'s schnozz; and Lucy spits wine in her neglectful lover's face. In this light, his final scene is a twist - Dick has finally done the right thing, and as such he avoids his routine punishment. Of course this good deed will backfire, for Annie if not for him. Indeed, Dick is central to two of Twin Peaks' most dramatic moments; not only does his deciding vote inadvertently select Annie for Windom's kidnapping, his cigarette smoke sets off the sprinkler system which precipitates BOB's escape and Leland's death.

Dick's social function changes sharply halfway through his screentime; at first, he's limited to what a grumbling Kimmy Robertson (not a fan of this development) called "The Lucy, Andy, and Dick Show." Most of these scenes take place in the sheriff's station and are almost entirely interactions with the other two figures in his menage a trois. After the Nicky fiasco, however, Dick branches out and becomes a much more communal figure, supervising town events and interacting with a variety of characters. His anchor setting becomes the bustling Great Northern (never leaving for many episodes, until he lands at the Road House for the pageant), and his contributions to the totality of Twin Peaks are thus cast into sharper relief. Twin Peaks the show is flawed, messy, and sometimes mundane, and Dick certainly tends to highlight this. Twin Peaks the town, however, benefits from a sprawling ensemble with wildly different personalities - including silly characters like Dick whose concerns are far from the mysterious, surreal, or supernatural. Thinking of "TWIN PEAKS" as a universe, and not just a narrative, allows his star to shine at its brightest.

A Scotsman orphaned in adolescence (he worked as a bellhop and bartender to support his siblings), Buchanan left a gig as a restaurant manager to move to London and became a fashion model. He later moved to New York and trained as an actor in the Strasberg program and with Marcia Haufrecht (whose other students include Alec Baldwin, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, and fellow Twin Peaks alum David Duchovney). Buchanan has some films as well as comedic and dramatic prime-time series (including The Nanny, NYPD Blue, voices on several Batman cartoons and, in addition to one appearance on The Larry Sanders Show, over twenty episodes of Garry Shandling's earlier, self-titled series). However, the vast majority of Buchanan's work has been in daytime soap operas (I spotted him myself several years ago - see above - and had to tweet about it). The numbers speak for themselves: twenty-five episodes of All My Children in one year, seventy-seven episodes of Day of Our Lives over fifteen years, ninety-six episodes of General Hospital over twenty-eight years (and counting), and a whopping two hundred fifteen episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful over eighteen years. To non-soap-viewers that volume seems staggering, but don't forget some of these shows have been running every day for decades, sometimes half a century - there are actors out there with over ten thousand appearances as the same character. Buchanan's biggest role in the Lynchverse may not even be Dick Tremayne. He starred in On the Air, the short-lived Lynch/Frost ABC sitcom about live television in the fifties (please don't assume any down-to-earth realism based on that description). Buchanan played the - surprise! - pompous, hapless Lester Guy, a slick Hollywood celebrity who gets continuously upstaged on his own show. (series pictured: General Hospital, 2015)


Dick is introduced by Robert Engels (whose comic sensibility definitely suits this character, though Harley Peyton's verbose flourishes find a home here too). In addition to their solo scripts, Peyton and Engels collaborate three times on Dick teleplays (once with just each other, once with Mark Frost, and once with Frost and Jerry Stahl). Peyton and Frost also write a Dick episode. Dick is written three times by Barry Pullman and once each by Scott Frost and Tricia Brock; in other words, every single writer on the show has at least one crack at him - except for David Lynch. Dick is directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, Todd Holland (twice), Tim Hunter (twice), Tina Rathborne, Duwayne Dunham, Caleb Deschanel, Uli Edel, James Foley, and Jonathan Sanger. In fact (we're now reaching this point in the character series), the only directors who never work with this character are Diane Keaton, Stephen Gyllenhaal...and Mark Frost and David Lynch. No wonder Lynch brought him on to On the Air (whose pilot he directed) - he wanted a chance to work with the actor if not (quite) the character.

Dick is onscreen for roughly thirty-seven minutes. He is in twenty scenes in eleven episodes, taking place over three weeks. He's featured the most in episode 19, when he decides Little Nicky is the devil. The location he appears in the most is the sheriff's station (with the Great Northern not far behind). He shares the most screentime with Lucy. He is is one of the top ten characters in episode 10 and one of the top five characters in episodes 19 and 24.




Episode 11: Lucy tells Cooper their backstory: "After watching a TV show I decided I needed some me-time during which we [Andy and her] didn't see each other, during which time I met Dick Tremayne, Horne's Department Store men's fashions. He had lots of coats and keeps himself and his car in great shape! Most of his behavior was asinine but at least he was different." Later, after Dick's disastrous offer of the abortion money, Lucy closes herself in the closet. As Andy walks past she mumbles something indistinct and then asks, "...or was it just your ascot?"

Episode 16: Andy learns that Dick might be the father, and he calls the department store and insists that Dick meet with him (this is what brings Dick to the station later on). He asks in a firm, aggressive manner, but quickly softens, much to Lucy's disappointment (she is watching excitedly).

Episode 17: Hawk asks Andy why he's being so nice to Dick, and Andy reveals it's a ploy to get on Lucy's good side - though he worries he's overdoing it.

Episode 21: Andy tells Lucy about his and Dick's suspicions of Nicky 's murderous ways. Deeply offended, she promises to get to the bottom of this - leading Doc to the station at the end of the episode.

Episode 24: Backstage at the fashion show, Lucy tells Andy she thinks Dick is getting a little too excited about some of the models.

Episode 25: Lucy thanks Andy for helping her during the weasel riot "which is more than I can say for a certain Dick we both know."

Episode 27: Lucy tells Andy that tomorrow she will decide who the baby's father is going to be. The Mayor tells Lana that Dick's going to be the third judge for the Miss Twin Peaks contest and he'll be a pushover because "he's British, or Bahamian, or something."


• Dick has a bit more to say at the wine-tasting in deleted dialogue from episode 26: "When my good friend, Ben Horne, asked me how would I like to contribute to the Good Fight, I said to myself, Dick, I said, you're a former sommelier, why not try to bring a little culture to the proceedings? I replied ... but of course: a wine-tasting parry. Uplift the general level of quality of life at the same time we're putting money into the fight to save our trees. Voila!" And before Miss Twin Peaks, when Milford says Lana would make a great Miss Twin Peaks, Dick replies, "Wouldn't she just. But my vote is of course something I hold sacred and will exercise with the greatest care and consideration. As you well know, being a man who's been charged with the awesome responsibility of running this town." The Mayor grumbles, "Alright, I can give you three hundred, but not a penny more."

• Nobody better articulates Dick's isolation from other aspects of the show than Ian Buchanan himself. At a USC retrospective in 2013, Buchanan recalled that he would only receive his sections of the episodic scripts, leading to a very distorted impression of what type of show Twin Peaks was (he never watched it before accepting the role). "I'd go into the makeup room all cheery and whistling and there'd be like buckets of blood everywhere and fingernails and hair and I'd be, 'What the fuck is going on?' And they'd say, 'Oh we can't tell you.' I'd no idea there was all this mayhem and this gore and this like horrible stuff..."


SHOWTIME: No, Buchanan is not on the cast list for 2017. Much as Lynch enjoyed the actor's work, and found his use for it with On the Air, the character doesn't exactly seem like one who encapsulates Lynch's vision of Twin Peaks. So we're left to wonder: what happened to Dick in later years? Did he remain in town or re-settle elsewhere? If he stayed, did he have any interactions with the child who might very well be his? (Although if, as many suspect, the offspring is to be played by Michael Cera, the dazed, bumbling Andy seems a better bet as his dad.)

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.

Jerry is defined by its appetites and enthusiasms, which is a good thing since his legal skills are more questionable.


circa early 1950s
Two little boys celebrate the opening of their family's hotel, the Great Northern. As his big brother Ben stands proudly by their father, Jerry Horne goofs off for the camera, sticking his tongue out and waving his hands with manic energy.

On another occasion, the preteen Horne brothers watch in sheer delight as Louise Dombrowski, an older girl in a skirt and jumper, dances on a hook rug with a flashlight. These memories will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
Jerry bursts into his brother's personal dining room at the hotel (which Ben now owns and operates), interrupting a family meal with Ben's wife Sylvia and daughters Audrey and Johnny. He unloads two baguettes with brie from his suitcases, munching on one while handing Ben the other. Together they savor the delicious taste and reminisce about "Jenny and Jenny down by the river," ignoring everyone else in the room and eventually leaving them behind so Ben can deliver some bad news to Jerry in the hallway. The daughter of Ben's lawyer Leland Palmer has been murdered, and the Ghostwood real estate deal with Norwegian investors has been called off. Jerry is devastated about the latter news and only belatedly registers the former. Ben has a pick-me-up planned; they set off in a speedboat for One Eyed Jack's, a Canadian bordello run by Ben. There they flirt with Blackie O'Reilly, the madam, and flip a coin to find out who gets to sleep with the "new girl." Ben wins and Jerry settles in at the bar for drinks with Blackie.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Jerry returns from a whirlwind trip to Iceland with a boisterous gang of Scandinavian party animals in tow. Jerry raves about their food (waving a frozen rack of lamb around his head) and women (he's in love with a tall blonde "ice goddess" named Heba), but Ben is annoyed with the racket they have been making, disturbing his guests all night. Leland, the grieving lawyer, stumbles in, saying that he wants to work but looking like he'd rather break down and cry. Ben and Jerry try to keep him from the guests, since the Norwegians left town after discovering Laura's murder. That night, the Hornes throw a party for the Icelanders, introducing them to "Twin Peaks' best and brightest" ("Where are you holding it," a snarky Jerry asks, "a phone booth?"). Actually, it's in the reception hall of the Great Northern, where Jerry makes passionate overtures to Heba, proposing "a mutual dip in each other's respective gene pools." Then he's up on stage, welcoming the Icelanders to town with an awkward Kennedy reference before big band music floods the speakers. Leland begins compulsively dancing by himself and Ben forces Jerry and others to join in, so that the Icelanders think it's all an intentional part of the soiree.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
Jerry, gesticulating with a giant pinecone, conducts a rousing Icelandic rendition of "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer" in Ben's office. When the Icelanders shuffle out to another room, Ben and Jerry share ice cream and discuss the contract; apparently, the Icelanders want to sign off at One Eyed Jack's. Ben sends Jerry to round up the party animals and get them on a van to Canada. A few hours later, Jerry's mood is a bit more foul; the deal came off fine, but other, more criminal matters, have not. He prowls around Blackie's office, yelling in her face and mocking her appearance and her drug addiction, before passing her some heroin. Blackie curses at him as he leaves the room. Jerry heads down the hall and knocks on a door, interrupting Ben's session with the new girl at One Eyed Jack's. "We got a situation," Jerry calls to him.

Friday, March 3, 1989
The next morning, Ben and Jerry discuss their problems in Ben's office. Their plan to burn down the Packard Saw Mill succeeded the night before, but the arsonist survived after being shot (in an effort to cover their tracks) and the fall woman is missing. "Well-begun is half-done," Jerry hopefully offers, before Leland saunters in. He's finally looking dapper, sharp, and cheerful...while also sporting an explicably white head of hair. He's also singing "Mairzy Doats." Ben and Jerry ask no questions; they exchange a quick look and then join in, dancing hysterically to the lawyer's ditty. In the evening, as Jerry explains a particularly ornate delicacy, he and Ben find Hank Jennings waiting for them in the office. The lights are off, the fire is burning, and Hank looks menacing in his leather jacket, but the Hornes try their best to out-menace him. Jerry is particularly vindictive about Leo's survival and incredulous when Hank says that Leo was chopping wood inside at the time of the shooting.  Hank explains that he called Catherine and sent her to the mill, where she must have been burned alive in the fire; he then asks what they should do with her ledgers."Leave the creative thinking to the brothers Horne," Ben advises Hank. "You're a bicep. Relax until we say flex." Jerry grabs his arm to reinforce the point, and nearly gets into a fight with Hank, who blows it all off with disconcerting laughter.

Saturday, March 4, 1989
The next day, Ben and Jerry sit by the fire and debate which mill ledger they should destroy. Ben runs through the advantages and disadvantages of using the real ledger rather than the falsified one. It's a complex matter, but Jerry seems just as absorbed by his delicious smoked-cheese pig. They resolve the issue by burning neither ledger, roasting marshmallows instead. Jerry returns to the office in the evening with a surprise: Catherine never signed the insurance policy, messing up the intended payoff but removing any possible suspicion of foul play. Ben and Jerry call the Icelanders to make sure they haven't heard about the mill fire, only for Leland to show up and tell them that he already informed the investors, who are understandably angry. Ben fumes; he tries to redirect Leland to less risky tasks but Leland is distracted by a wanted poster on Ben's desk and races out of the room. "Jerry," Ben says, absolutely deadpan. "Please kill Leland." Wonders Jerry, gritting his teeth and jutting out his chin: "Is this...real, Ben? Or some...strange and twisted dream?"

Friday, March 10, 1989
Jerry greets Ben in a jail cell rather than his office. He's been arrested for the murder of Laura Palmer and is being held at the sheriff's station. Jerry, fresh from a trip to Japan to meet with a new group of investors, puts on his legal hat to serve as Ben's attorney (Leland is facing his own murder charges in the death of another suspect; not to mention the fact that he's the father of Ben's alleged victim). Jerry is clearly incompetent and in no way a boost to Ben's confidence. "Did you kill her?" he asks, and when Ben admonishes him for even asking, he sighs, "You're right. The last thing a good defense attorney needs to know is the truth." Ben's alibi is the still-missing Catherine, which does him no good. Rather than ponder the situation, however, Jerry is distracted by the cell's bunk beds. He reminds Ben of the good old days with Louise Dombrowski, bringing a smile to both their faces. "Lord," Jerry sighs. "What's become of us?" When Cooper and Truman interrogate Ben later on, they confront him with damning passages from Laura's diary. Jerry fumbles and Ben flips out, while Cooper mocks Jerry's legal record: "Jeremy Horne, Gonzaga University, 1974. Graduated last in his class of one hundred forty-two. Passed the bar on his third attempt. License to practice revoked in the states of Illinois, Florida, Alaska, Massachussetts." Asking for a moment alone with his client, Jerry offers Ben the best advice he's presented all day. "As your attorney, your friend, and your brother," he advises, "I strongly suggest that you get yourself a better lawyer." Before they have time to consider, Cooper tries another tack. A one-armed man is brought in to sniff around Ben and declares "BOB has been very close." Jerry is incredulous - who the hell is this "Bob" guy? - and demands that Truman either charge or release Ben. Truman complies...by officially charging Ben with murder.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
A little over a week later, much has changed. Audrey brings Jerry back from another globetrotting business trip to help with a new crisis. The murders charges were dropped, but the traumatic experience - along with the loss of other business ventures (both Ghostwood and One-Eyed Jack's) - sent Ben retreating into a fantasy life where he is Robert E. Lee, playing with toy soldiers and waving a Confederate flag while signing "Dixie." The town psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Jacoby participates enthusiastically, but Jerry is horrified.

Monday, March 20, 1989
The next day Jerry appears more sanguine. He reminds Audrey that there could be benefits for both of them if Ben stays mad, but Audrey reminds him that the business will go to her. If he doesn't help her father out of his condition, he'll have to look for new opportunities elsewhere. Stunned that his niece has acquired the ruthless family instincts, he agrees. That afternoon, he gets into costume and roleplays the end of the Civil War - with the North surrendering to the South this time. This does the trick, and Ben awakens to his old identity, with a twist.

Tuesday, March 21, 1989
A seemingly reformed, healthy-living Ben calls a meeting of his associates to declares his new plan for Ghostwood. The land is now owned by Catherine, who emerged from hiding and forced him to sign over the property when he was in jail. Jerry shares hors d'oeuvres with everyone, including "Bob Briggs" and John Justice Wheeler. He's initially confused by Ben's advocacy for the endangered pine weasel - "They're incredible, roasted," he inappropriately declares - but ultimately impressed by what he perceives as a cunning strategy. "So we block Catherine's development until the wheel turns and we get another shot. That's brilliant, Ben, brilliant!" He's still thinking like a Horne.

To me, at least, Jerry is the character who best captures the comic potential of Twin Peaks (which doesn't just mean I find him the funniest, though that may be true as well). With his strange mannerisms and petty motivations, he is able to straddle the surrealism of David Lynch and the baroque bemusement of Mark Frost. Jerry is also a certain type of character, whom we've met already in the form of Pinkle, Mike, and Dick - there's a name for a comedic trio - and whom we'll meet in more forms soon. He can be brought in or shuffled around to serve various storylines, although in his case these stories are all associated with Ben. Jerry is a quintessential sidekick, offering other characters someone to bounce off of in terms of both exposition and dramatic energy. The dependence of such a character offers the writer great freedom - the sidekick can be just about anybody, because their actions don't determine the narrative. What's important is how their energy fuels or offsets the other character, and there's room for all sorts of delightful tangents and indulgences.

That's certainly the case with Jerry. In fact, a case could be made that Ben doesn't really come alive as his own character until Jerry enters the picture (in the first couple episodes Ben seems more like a stern, greedy businessman without much color; the second Jerry charges forward with that brie and baguette, the dynamic changes completely). In some ways, Jerry connects the timeless quality of Twin Peaks to the zeitgeist of the wider world; his loud fashion sense and bizarre hairdo scream "early nineties" in a way most other characters don't. Not unrelated, Jerry infuses Twin Peaks - whose grim pilot contains a more arch, dry sense of humor - with the goofy, zesty energy of Wild at Heart (where Lynch first worked with David Patrick Kelly and invited him to appear on Twin Peaks). Lynch's sensibility was moving so fast during the Twin Peaks period that we can carve out three or four different "eras" between the production of the pilot in the winter of 1989 and the editing of the film in the winter of 1992. Jerry Horne exemplifies the spirit of that second period, approaching the turn-of-the-decade, when the energy of Lynch's cinematic road trip fused with the tight, imaginative web of intrigue wound by Frost to create the spirit of the first season.

Jerry's role in season one is small but dynamic. In his first episode, he quite literally liberates Ben from a repressed family environment, luring the audience into the sensual, mysterious, threatening world of One Eyed Jack's (a trip suggested by Ben, but made possible by Jerry's arrival). When Jerry returns a few episodes later, he carries along an entire flock of drunken, singing Icelanders, multiplying "the Jerry effect" as we approach the first season's climax. Whenever Jerry reappears in season two, he carries some of that first season freshness with him, albeit perhaps with diminishing returns when the cameos grow more brief and the stories less intriguing. He's a frequent presence in the first couple Lynch episodes, presenting a much more sinister vibe than before; this helps pave the way for Ben to be our primary suspect. When Jerry returns, the real killer has been revealed, and both Horne brothers are quickly demoted to pathetic buffoonery. The "attorney" scenes provide Jerry with the closest thing he has to an active arc; amusingly, he proves himself completely incapable of driving the action (except in a negative way). Through this development, Jerry loses some of his edge. His inherent ridiculousness is no longer offset by whirlwind confidence, as in season one, or a dangerous temper, as in early season two. As with Albert Rosenfield's big speech, a fun character development - maybe an apex - also leads to a slight decline. Jerry's still a lot of fun in his later scenes, but he's very much sidelined in the Civil War drama. His one big moment - greedily attempting to betray Ben - is well-played but feels a bit wrong; scoundrel he may be, but we do believe Jerry loves his brother. Jerry's final scene has some wonderful moments. The "roasted weasel" bit makes me laugh every time. However, it's also an unfair anticlimax for the hilarious Horne; when we casually cut away from him for the last time, it's startling to realize we'll never see him again (at least on the original series).

Whoever wrote the IMDb biography nailed it: "Compact, fierce, fiesty charactor actor." Kelly left a mark on numerous films from a wide array of genres, including 48 Hrs., Hammett, Commando, The Crow, and Flags of Our Fathers (in which he plays President Truman). He worked with Spike Lee on Malcolm X, Crooklyn, and Chi-Raq, and popped up in dozens of hit TV shows like Spenser: For Hire, Miami Vice, Moonlighting, Mad About You, Law & Order, Gossip Girl, Louie, The Blacklist, and as the homeless poet Double-T in a five-episode arc of the PBS mystery kids' show Ghostwriter. Kelly's most celebrated screen role, even more than Jerry, is probably the gang leader Luther in The Warriors, where his distinctive delivery cemented an iconic line in pop culture: "Warriors, come out and play..." Kelly is an articulate, free-spirited multitalent with an eclectic career in music, theater, television, and cinema - he was a mime too, even training with Marcel Marceau! He discusses it all in a podcast with Brad Dukes. (Jerry is also briefly played by an uncredited child actor.) (film pictured: The Outsiders, 1979)

Jerry appears in scripts by every writer on the show except for Jerry Stahl (who may not have written much of what showed up onscreen in his episode anyway). Mark Frost writes or co-writes (once, with David Lynch) the bulk of Jerry's early appearances - all but one of Jerry's first eight scenes (but none after that). Harley Peyton writes a couple solo scripts and collaborates with Robert Engels on two others. Both of Scott Frost's scripts feature Jerry (one is his top episode), and Tricia Brock and Barry Pullman contribute one scene/episode each (in Pullman's case, just a simple acknowledgement that a young Jerry is in old film footage). While Lynch recruited the actor and directs Jerry's first episode, he wasn't actually the first to direct Jerry. Episode 2 was shot out of sequence (because of Lynch's Wild at Heart production schedule), so Lesli Linka Glatter and Caleb Deschanel crafted the character before Lynch. Lynch directs Jerry three times, Glatter  and Deschanel twice, and he is directed in one episode each by Diane Keaton, Uli Edel, and Duwayne Dunham (as a child only).

Jerry is onscreen for roughly forty-two minutes. He is in eighteen scenes in nine episodes, taking place over three and a half weeks (plus images from four decades earlier). He's featured the most in episode 15, when acting as Ben's attorney. His primary location is the Great Northern. He shares the most screentime with Ben. He is one of the top ten characters in episode 2 and one of the top five characters in episodes 9 and 15.





• In the draft available online, Jerry is scripted to appear in episode 1. Instead of interrupting a dinner, he enters Ben's office after a crisis with Leland (who calls the funeral home and breaks down over the line - this part of the scene was shot and has been spotted on outtake reels, though it isn't on any DVD/blu-ray release). Jerry's conversation with Ben is pretty similar to the one that was actually shot for episode 2. But One Eyed Jack's doesn't come up until a later scene between them. As they agree to go, Audrey is watching through her peephole (which would have explained why she slipped the note about "One Eyed Jack's" to Cooper).

• Accordingly, Jerry's appearance in episode 2 is very different. He doesn't arrive; he's already in the dining room with Ben's family as the episode begins but he's on a conference call with the Icelanders: "JERRY HORNE sits before a roaring fireplace, tumbler of bourbon in hand, eating nuts compulsively from a giant bowl while rapidly adding figures on a large computer while scores of numbers flash up and down on the large computer monitor, all the while talking into a headset phone receiver in a melange of Icelandic and English." Then he starts singing to his niece and nephew: "Nephew Johnny, don't be forlorn ... things're bound to be better in the morn ... then there's Sylvia, who treats me with scorn ... she thinks Jerry an absolute thorn ... around the horn to little niece Audrey, the Horne's first born and here goes Jerry with brother Ben Horne, long-gone like turkeys through the corn ..." That last line will probably perk the ears of Fire Walk With Me fans. At the end of the episode, Cooper was supposed to run into the Hornes at the bar of the Great Northern - this would have served as his formal introduction (which, come to think of it, never occurs on the show). Cooper tells Diane to run a check on Jerry - "Nothing specific. Call it an instinct. Check that; intuition. An instinct is when you get hungry."

• Ben is supposed to talk to Jerry over the phone twice in episode 4, instead of once.

• In a deleted scene from episode 7, which is available on the blu-ray, Jerry comforts a weepy Heba at One Eyed Jack's. She is jealous that he is flirting with other women.

• In the script for episode 8, the scene in Blackie's room takes place after Jerry interrupts Ben's "new girl" visit, and Ben is there too. In fact he, not Jerry, is the one who mocks Blackie and offers her drugs. The brothers also discuss issues with the mill fire (apparently it didn't spread as widely as they would have liked), and Leo. Ben expresses his disappointment with the new girl, and Jerry volunteers to take a crack at her, but Ben pulls him away. They have other work to attend to. At the Great Northern, Ben tells Jerry to make sure the Icelanders don't hear the news and that the pilot of their plane doesn't fly near the burnt mill. When Leland enters, Ben and Jerry just stare in disbelief. (Lynch would add the dancing sequence when he saw Richard Beymer, who plays Ben, warming up on the set with a tapdance.) When they meet with Hank, Jerry offers "a local work of genius: tree-ripened Granny Smith's, dipped in hot, hand-pulled creme caramel, dusted with crushed nuts and a dark coco powder." Their interaction on the page is much more amiable than Lynch directs it.

• As scripted in episode 9, Jerry burns one of the ledgers (the real, private one). No marshmallows!

• In the episode 10 script, Ben talks to Jerry on the phone, and asks him to hold the Icelanders off until the documents are executed.

• After a quick reference to Louise Dombrowski in the episode 15 script (the director added the whole flashback on a whim), Jerry offers Ben a ginger root and explains, "I'm supposed to take a bath in it when I get home. Then dry my right side with my right hand and my left with my left hand. Cures jet lag. Little trick I picked up from a Geisha named Meko. She boiled my shirts. Wish you'd been there, Ben ... she had the cutest little feet."

• And now for the one that really surprised me, which I discovered for the first time only while writing this entry. In episode 23, Jerry presents an...imaginative idea at the business meeting: "Ben, over in Sicily, I had a marketing brainstorm. We set up a special package deal: Twin Peaks, Land of Crime. See where Laura Palmer was murdered, see where her body was found, visit Maddy Ferguson's final resting place; I call it the Homicide Getaway -" No one else at the meeting is enamored with this proposal.


• Jerry was supposed to appear in Fire Walk With Me, during a party for Johnny Horne. He tells Ben and Leland that they should play the French and Norwegian investors off one another - and that the French "are nuts about wood. They get goofy over trees." The scene was never shot because Richard Beymer balked at the script's depiction of his character. 


• Jerry's mentions aren't extensive or integral enough to really justify a standalone "offscreen" section. However, he's referenced several times in episodes he isn't in. In episode 4, Ben talks to Jerry over the phone as he boards a plane with the Icelanders. In episode 13, Ben invites Leland back to work, explaining that Jerry is in Tokyo on business (he relays Jerry's approval to Tojamura in episode 14). Audrey calls Jerry up in episode 20 to bring him back to Twin Peaks. And technically, Jerry's story doesn't end with that business meeting in episode 23 even if that's his last onscreen moment. As he dines with Jack and Audrey, Ben is informed that the chef is trying to stab Jerry, who won't stop badgering him in the kitchen. Now that's an appropriate ending.

• Jerry's description of the delicacy in episode 8, in full (as heard in the actual episode): "I read all about it in this French magazine - they take the entire head, they dip it in this kind of blancmange pudding, roll it in oats, stuff it full of walnuts, hot rocks and a spice bouquet, wrap it in a papilliote, seal the edges with a sugar glaze and bake it under glass."

• With the Hornes out of Fire Walk With Med, Kelly could only see the film as an audience member. He commented on it at the USC Twin Peaks retrospective in 2013: "I sort of remember when they said it's gonna finish up. And I was very thrilled that they made a complete thing with the movie, Fire Walk With Me. So it is a complete thing. I don't know if anybody mentions this, maybe it's obvious to everybody but the big breakthrough for me in the series was that for the first time in a so-called investigative police show you remember the name of the victim. I can't think of another show ever where you remember the name of the victim. Law & Order, any of those shows, it's always about the police." There are many more great anecdotes (including how his karate teacher would punish him for not telling him who killed Laura Palmer and how Lynch told him to play the baguette "like a saxophone"); it's worth listening to the whole playlist over time, but this segment is especially strong.


SHOWTIME: Yes, Kelly is on the cast list for 2017. He spoke about his return in the above-linked Dukes interview: "It was pure joy because David Lynch is on fire, and he's directed every one. And I'll just tell you one story from the set. We were out filming on the ranch where they filmed...what's that Western? (hums the theme to Bonanza) Bonanza! That's it. And Little House on the Prairie as well. And so we're out in the hills there near L.A. And he had me way off, running in to do this one scene, and I couldn't hear him shout 'Action.' And so I said 'Hey David, it's twenty-five years later, I can't hear so good!' And he shouted back, 'Join the club!'"

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.

Jacoby is ambiguously caught between secretly lost soul, confident but offputting eccentric, and wise guide for Twin Peaks' psyche.


Wednesday, February 22, 1989
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, psychiatrist for the small woodland town of Twin Peaks, sips a colorful mixed drink in his equally colorful, Hawaiian-themed office (he is wearing red- and blue-lensed glasses, to heighten the hues even more). Jacoby calls Laura Palmer, a teenage patient who doesn't want her parents to know about their therapy. She scolds the doctor for calling her at home. Jacoby tells Laura, whose secret life is filled with sex and drugs, that "a little trouble with your parents is the least of your worries" but Laura is upset and distressed. She reluctantly offers to record him another cassette tape tomorrow. With a twinge of desperation, Jacoby pleads "Send me a kiss?" but Laura hangs up on him.

Friday, February 24, 1989
Laura has been murdered. Far from grieving, Jacoby seems oddly manic. He glimpses Sheriff Harry Truman and visiting FBI Agent Dale Cooper at Calhoun Memorial Hospital and chases their elevator several flights to breathlessly inform them that Laura was his patient (and her parents didn't know). He laughs in a creepy fashion as he tells them this, while absentmindedly fondling the dancing girl on his tie - his finger traces back and forth beneath her three-dimensional grass skirt. Cooper and Truman turn down his offer to accompany them to the morgue. Although he has a cork in one ear (he removed the other to talk to them), Jacoby may overhear Cooper from around the corner: "That guy's a psychiatrist?!" That night, Jacoby treks through the woods with a flashlight and digs through the dirt until he uncovers Laura's buried half-heart necklace and takes it home with him.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
In his office, Jacoby pops in Laura's final tape, recorded the night of her death. He listens on headphones as she explains how tired she is of her secret boyfriend James Hurley and how she wishes she'd met Dr. Jacoby sooner. From beyond the grave, or at least the irretrievable past, she ominously tells her doctor, "I just know I'm gonna get lost in those woods again tonight." Then she begins to discuss her "mystery man." Jacoby plucks a hollow coconut off a fake palm tree, removes Laura's necklace hidden inside and weeps as he stares at this token and listens to her voice.

Monday, February 27, 1989
At the Great Northern Hotel, Jacoby comforts Johnny Horne, an emotionally disturbed young man who refuses to take off his Indian headdress for Laura's funeral. However, Jacoby shares his grief, soothes him, and makes a connection that few others can. Johnny removes this part of his outfit and he and Jacoby rock back and forth, touching their foreheads as Johnny's parents express their exasperation with his condition. That evening, Jacoby visits Laura's fresh gravesite alone, depositing a bouquet of flowers on her tombstone. Agent Cooper approaches and Jacoby explains that he couldn't bear to attend Laura's funeral, but that she changed his life. Before her, he had grown apathetic and cold to his patients - she reawakened his compassion.

Tuesday, February 28, 1989
The following morning, Jacoby's mood is much more relaxed, even cheerful, and Cooper seems put off by him as he was at their first meeting. Jacoby performs magic tricks with a golf ball (making it disappear and then pop out of his mouth) while refusing to answer Cooper's questions. He cites doctor-patient confidentiality but is willing to confirm that Laura's problems were sexual and she used cocaine for therapeutic purposes (he cites this as a positive sign, comparing her to Hawaiians who used ginger "to ease the pain of profound confusion). Jacoby suggests that the ultimate source Laura's pain remains unknown to him. Cooper asks point-blank if Jacoby was one of the three men she had sex with the night she died, but he denies the charge. He tells them that Cooper and Truman followed a red corvette into the woods the night after Laura died ("a man Laura had spoken to me about," though he won't say the name). Jacoby tells the lawmen he's planning a "pilgrimage to Pebble Beach" in a month.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Jacoby conducts a session with the Briggs family - father (Major Garland) and mother (Betty) are worried about their erratic, truant, violent teenage son (Bobby) - who was dating Laura when she died. Bobby acts bored and hostile, and Jacoby asks to talk with him alone. Telling him to "cut the crap," Jacoby asks a series of personal questions that stun Bobby ("What happened the first time you had sex with Laura? Did you cry?") that lead the grieving young man to confess that Laura forced him into a life of crime, that she wanted to die, and that she thought people wanted to be good but were dragged down by a darkness within. Jacoby guides and interrogates Bobby, asserting that Laura felt worthless and strove to make others feel like her; the two agree that she was "harboring some awful secret" as Bobby breaks down.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
Jacoby is watching the soap opera Invitation to Love when he receives a phone call from a familiar voice. She teases him with phrases used on Laura's tapes, but he denies that it could possibly the dead girl. She tells him to check his doorstep - there's a video in an envelope and when he pops it in the VCR he sees a picture of someone who does look remarkably like Laura holding a newspaper with today's date. She tells him to meet her at the intersection of Sparkwood and 21 but Jacoby identifies a gazebo from the video and heads there instead. When he arrives he stalks the blonde figure from the bushes. She turns around and he is stunned - could this really be Laura after all? Before he can figure out her identity, he is attacked from behind, bashed several times in the back before the masked man scurries away (halted by the sound of an approaching motorcyle). Jacoby gasps and grasps at the air as the Laura lookalike is escorted away by two teenagers on a bike. He nearly dies of a heart attack. At the hospital, Doc Will Hayward watches over the sedated Jacoby and says that when he was brought in he was making some "pretty incredible" statements.

Friday, March 3, 1989
Cooper and Truman visit Jacoby in the hospital. Cooper presents him with the half-heart necklace and insists he give them the straight truth. Jacoby admits that he followed two teenagers into the woods after losing the red corvette the other night. He saw them bury the necklace, and then he retrieved it after they'd gone, as a keepsake. Jacoby compares Laura to the torn heart on the necklace but says that the last time he saw her she seemed to be at peace, like she'd made a decision to die ("perhaps she let herself be killed," he explains). Cooper also asks him about a murder of a fellow patient that occurred when he was in intensive care. "It's all like a dream," Jacoby insists, but despite being drugged-up at the time he does remember "a peculiar smell...scorched engine oil."

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Cooper and Truman visit an almost fully recovered Jacoby at the hospital. His wife Eolani has flown in from Hawaii and is conducting a ceremony with him. Jacoby asks to be hypnotized so that he can recall the face of the man who smothered the patient the other night. Cooper reads a calming passage about a golf course while Truman holds a crystallized stone. Jacoby passes into another state and recalls that the smell of oil was in the park (he doesn't say if it was only in the park or also in the hospital, as he suggested before). Then he remembers the face of the killer...

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
...Ten days later, Jacoby is attending the wake of that killer, Leland Palmer. He is in high spirits, having just returned from an excursion to Hawaii. At this oddly cheerful event, Jacoby hangs out with Major Briggs, Truman, and Cooper, who has lost any aversion he once had toward the eccentric shrink. That afternoon, the doctor accompanies Big Ed Hurley to Twin Peaks High School, where they attempt to enroll Ed's wife Nadine in high school (she has embraced the delusion that she is still a teenager). Jacoby says nothing, allowing Ed to present his case to the perplexed vice principal.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Jacoby watches, delighted, as Ben Horne re-enacts the Civil War in his office at the Great Northern. Having experienced a series of personal traumas and business failures, he believes himself to be Robert E. Lee. As Jacoby explains to Ben's horrified daughter Audrey and brother Jerry "by reversing the South's defeat...he in turn will reverse his own emotioinal setback." Then the doctor joins in a rousing chorus of "Dixie," while waving the Confederate flag. Jacoby heads over to the sheriff's station, where he claims to have accompanied the recent widow Lana Milford for nearly twenty-four hours (except for the time he was visiting Ben?). He explains that, contrary to popular assumption, she is not cursed but simply possesses a "heightened sexual drive." He then heads off to a bowling date (apparently what happens in Twin Peaks stays in Twin Peaks as far as Eolani is concerned) but is interrupted by a shotgun-wielding Mayor Dwayne Milford, who wants to avenge his dead brother. "I'll blast her into kindgdom come," the old man insists, "and the hippie too!" Instead, the mayor winds up falling in love with Lana himself, stealing her away from Jacoby, who is simply relieved to survive.

Monday, March 20, 1989
Jacoby encourages Ben to enact his fantasies in the Great Northern lobby with the hope he'll slowly emerge into reality, but he only delves further into nineteenth-century lore. Jacoby and Audrey agree to conduct "the Appomotax scenario," in which Jacoby impersonates General Ulysses S. Grant and surrenders the Northern forces to Ben...er, General Lee. Upon victory, Ben passes out and awakens as himself, barely remembering the surreal experience as a dream.

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Jacoby conducts a house call with Ed and Nadine, who is still immersed in her adolescent escape. She wants to "break up" with Ed, not realizing they are married, and Jacoby patiently tries to explain the situation to her. She doesn't quite seem to get it, but does realize for the first time that she's blind in her left eye.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Jacoby operates a slideshow of Nadine's triumphs on the high school wrestling team and tries again to encourage the gathering (this time including both Ed's and Nadine's lovers) to explain that a divorce is imminent and Ed is getting re-married. Nadine, in an angry tone, insists she's getting married too, and clenches her boyfriend's hand so tight that something snaps and he begins to scream in pain.

Monday, March 27, 1989
Jacoby escorts Sarah Palmer, the only surviving family member of the girl he treated, into the RR Diner. "You were right," he affirms, shuffling her over to the Briggs and informing the Major that Sarah has a message he wants to deliver. Jacoby sits down beside Sarah in the booth, his job complete - the message is between them. He couldn't help her daughter but now, at least, he can provide assistance to another Palmer.

As we enter the twenties, we are reaching Twin Peaks' most distinctive characters. In terms of immediately identifiable features, Jacoby's red/blue glasses must be up there with Cooper's black suit, Laura's plastic wrapping, Nadine's eye patch. His clownish fashion sense made him an instant hit among viewers of the first season - among the characters we've discussed so far, perhaps only the Log Lady and one-armed man are as iconic. Indeed, if you were to assemble a list of "ten most memorable Twin Peaks characters," there's a good chance Jacoby would be on it, far above characters with much more screentime (although they're arguably all stars from here on). Why? Aside from being a catchy image on its own terms, his appearance telegraphed what for many was the Twin Peaks' signature quality - flamboyant quirkiness that teetered between creepy unease and lovable eccentricity. Jacoby was one of the most popular suspects for contemporary audiences; various polls placed him near the top of the list. His presence on the show, and the suspicion it engendered, may link up with a widespread ambivalence about psychiatry (his kookiness is occasionally portrayed as both a contradiction of his professional role and the logical expression of a person whose job is to navigate the wild world of the psyche). Jacoby is also a bit of a foil to Cooper, who calls back to the ramrod-straight forties and fifties with his clipped delivery and slick appearance. By contrast, Jacoby's long hair, sexualized demeanor, and psychedelic style all suggest the sixties counterculture. As does the doctor's interest in mysticism and New Age techniques, although these are qualities Cooper himself shares - perhaps making him more of an eighties/nineties hybrid of these two cultural strains. Jacoby shows us a worldly side of Twin Peaks, connected to larger cultural trends and faraway places (his Hawaiian obsession is delightfully incongruous in the cold, damp woods of the Pacific Northwest). Meanwhile, Jacoby guides us inward as well as outward; Donna Hayward, who is instinctively drawn to the people Laura shared her secrets with, makes Jacoby the centerpiece of her investigation into Laura's psychic life.

Jacoby is certainly deeply connected to Laura. Every single one of his first season appearances centers around her. This makes him one of the characters closest to Twin Peaks' core, and it also makes him a relic of season one, lost in the broader, less focused landscape of season two. We've already discussed characters who hover around the periphery of other plots and then gain their own narrative arc later on. Jacoby takes the opposite course; with Laura gone he becomes a supporting figure in a variety of Twin Peaks' invariably farcical psychodramas. Cheerful where he once was sad, a professional presence rather than a wild card, Jacoby drifts through the latter half of the show without a true character purpose. We're always happy to see him, and he maintains his distinctive surface qualities till the end, but it's clear the writers no longer know how use this character to drive the narrative rather than just tag along. Every time he shows up, there's a faint twinge, a reminder not just of his character's former tragicomic ambiguity, but also of the first season's potent mixture of tight storytelling with a deep sense of mystery and atmosphere.

Jacoby is a character who clearly evolves before our eyes. In the pilot, he's almost a throwaway cameo, although the script definitely sets him up for later appearances. This version of Jacoby doesn't seem to care much about Laura's death (he grins and laughs the whole time) and his creep factor is turned up high...that hula skirt! - not to mention his desire to see his dead teenage patient in the morgue. Considering that the gloved hand retroactively belongs to him (although I think that decision was made after the pilot was completed), Jacoby closes both of the first two episodes on an ominous note. He'll never be quite so sinister again - as attention shifts to Leo and Jacques, Jacoby becomes a more benevolent, if still somewhat off-putting, guide into Laura's secret life rather than a strong suspect. His scene with Johnny, his visit to Laura's grave, even his diffident response to Cooper's queries, all suggest a character who may be an oddball but isn't a murderer, and probably has his heart in the right place. The tail end of the season uses Jacoby to bring us closer to Laura (he's talked about probably more than he's seen up to this point) and as if to hammer home the idea that he didn't do it, the finale even turns him into a casualty himself.

All of Jacoby's scenes in the first season are just as much about him - developing and expanding his persona - as they are about the characters he interacts with. Right away in season two, this is no longer the case. Jacoby's hospital appearances are primarily expositional, although the writers have fun with the Hawaiian motif once more when he's hypnotized (the last time we really learn anything about him as an individual). Observing just his scenes, there is a radical shift halfway through his narrative. As he recognizes Jacques' assassin in his mind, we dissolve to owls and trees...and then suddenly we're at a glibly joyful wake. Jacoby, of all people (maybe only Doc and Donna more so), should be deeply shaken at this event. Leland was not only the murderer he identified in his flashback, he was also the man whose assault placed Jacoby in the hospital. Perhaps most importantly, Leland was directly responsible for the trauma of Jacoby's most important patient - her abuser and, ultimately, her killer. And yet here Jacoby is, beaming and praising the "restorative powers of Hanalei Bay." It feels as if we've slipped into an alternate dimension or a pleasant, escapist dream, pulled backwards through Mulholland Drive's blue box.

From there, Jacoby provides, at best, a relief during some of the more tedious subplots of season two. His skill is now presented in a more unambiguously positive light than before, even if his methods still seem a bit wacky. Mostly he lets the drama unfold between the other characters onscreen, his presence more a spice than a central ingredient. And then, finally, there's another shift. When Nadine crushes Mike's arm, his full-throated yell wakes us up from our escapist reverie, its echo fading into the distinctive strains of "Dark Mood Woods", a piece of music perfectly suited to the Twin Peaks finale. Why? Because its depths and effects are fresh, an accumulation of the show's twists and turns that got us to this point (it's an entirely new track), yet somehow this soundscape taps into and expresses the mood that lingered beneath the surface from the beginning. It's a discovery and a re-discovery at the same time. To this accompaniment, Jacoby enters the diner - a location he's never been, but where he belongs as a fellow icon of Twin Peaks - with  Sarah - a character he's never interacted with before, though we find that hard to believe. And he facilitates the delivery of a supernatural message, despite only having the most tangential connection to the supernatural previously (he is the first to mention "scorched engine oil") - another first that astonishes us in retrospect.

Jacoby's final appearance was originally cut from Fire Walk With Me (the long pan/tease and the repetition of information from the pilot make it feel a bit like fanservice) but it reappears in The Missing Pieces. As a culmination to his tale (for now), it's a poignant send-off, finally connecting him to the character he loved so dearly - but in a way that reveals how one-sided that love may have been. As a chronological prologue it saturates the rest of his narrative with a sense of pathetic if endearing helplessness. He may not exactly be a super-shrink with mystical powers of observation, but at least he isn't a homicidal psycho. Jacoby goes through quite a journey to both start and end here, yet it all feels of a piece - he's one of the most clearly-drawn characters in Twin Peaks.

There comes a time in every Twin Peaks viewer's experience, hopefully many episodes into the series (the longer the wait, the sharper and sweeter the shock), when they realize that Ben Horne and Dr. Jacoby are Tony and Riff from West Side Story. Tamblyn, like so many Twin Peaks participants, has multiple talents. He got his start as a child actor ("Rusty Tamblyn") in classic Hollywood films like Gun Crazy, Samson and Delilah and Father of the Bride. A trained acrobat, Tamblyn's breakthrough came in musicals - starting with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and climaxing with his role as the finger-snapping lead Jet, the single part for which he is still best-remembered today. In between he provided uncredited choreography for Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock (he continued to work as a choreographer for decades). But Tamblyn also took dramatic roles; he was Oscar-nominated for Peyton Place, the small-town melodrama that provided one of Twin Peaks' most-cited antecedents (especially when the film was later transformed into a prime-time soap opera).

In the mid-sixties, Tamblyn shifted his focus from performance to art, creating celebrated collages and joining the countercultural scene in Topanga Canyon with Neil Young, Dennis Hopper, and Dean Stockwell (Tamblyn also attended dance classes with Stockwell and Elizabeth Taylor back in the forties). He was only rarely appearing in films by this point (mostly B movies, including one shot on the Mansons' compound around the time of their killing spree); according to TCM, he was mostly appearing in regional theater by the early eighties. Nearly a decade before Twin Peaks, he co-wrote and starred in the cult classic Human Highway, a collaboration with Young, Hopper, and Stockwell. His career picked up again after Twin Peaks, but in old age he focused most of his energy on (successfully) promoting the career of his daughter Amber Tamblyn. They appeared together in Django Unchained and Joan of Arcadia, where she played the title character and he played God. Tamblyn's brother was the organist for the Standells ("Love that dirty water...oh, Boston you're my home...") and his parents were actors too. Probably one of the few people in movie history who has been directed by both Cecil B. DeMille and Quentin Tarantino, Tamblyn has been acting for nearly seventy years - likely the longest career of any Twin Peaks participant.

This interview covers some of the highlights (Amber Tamblyn has also written an interesting blog post about her dad's brief hitchhiking run-in with the Manson gang). (film pictured: West Side Story, 1961)


Jacoby is written by Mark Frost in six episodes (twice in collaboration with David Lynch). Harley Peyton and Robert Engels each write two solo Jacoby scripts and collaborate on one other. Barry Pullman writes two Jacoby scripts, while Tricia Brock and Scortt Frost each write one. Jacoby's scene in the finale is not in the script - it's improvised by Lynch, who directs Jacoby four times overall (including in the film, which he co-writes with Engels). Jacoby is also directed by Lesli Linka Glatter (twice), Tim Hunter (twice), Tina Rathborne (twice), Caleb Deschanel, James Foley, Duwayne Dunham, Diane Keaton and Mark Frost. Uli Edel directs Jacoby's top episode, but Tamblyn loathed his experience with the strict director (as related years later in Brad Dukes'Reflections oral history).

Jacoby is onscreen for roughly forty-four minutes - we are now reaching characters whose screentime approaches a full episode. He is in twenty-four scenes in half the episodes of the series (fifteen - a record so far) plus the deleted scenes collection from the feature film, taking place in a little over a month. He's featured the most in episode 21, when he treats Ben and Lana. He appears the most in the hospital (although his office and the Great Northern are both close behind). He shares the most screentime with Cooper. He is one of the top ten characters in episode 22 and one of the top five characters in episode 21. Despite his strong showing in those particular season two episodes, Jacoby has much more of an impact in season one, where he's one of the top twenty characters, whereas in season two he doesn't even make the top thirty (granted, there's more competition). To put this in perspective, he has as much screentime in the first eight episodes of the series as he does in the last nineteen. The majority of Jacoby's story - roughly twenty-five minutes - takes place during the Laura Palmer investigation.




The Pilot: The shot of the gloved hand grabbing the necklace is intercut with Sarah leaping up from the couch where she is resting. She screams and covers her mouth, implying that she is somehow "seeing" what Jacoby is doing.

Episode 2: Cooper conducts a mystical-psychic investigation to discover the identity of the "J" Laura wrote about in her diary. He throws rocks at a bottle, hoping the one that breaks will point to that mystery man. When Lucy calls out Jacoby's name, we see an image of Jacoby from the pilot before Cooper knocks a bottle off the stump without breaking it.

Episode 3: Audrey spies on Jacoby comforting Johnny from a hidden passageway.

Episode 4: Sarah recalls her vision of the hand scooping up the necklace, which shocks Donna. That afternoon at school, Audrey tells Donna that Laura was seeing Jacoby (she claims to have learned this by spying on them before the funeral, although we never hear Jacoby say this to Johnny). At night, Donna and James return to the woods and see that the necklace is gone.

Episode 5: Maddy Ferguson, Laura's cousin, finds other tapes to Jacoby hidden in Laura's bedroom and calls Donna to let her know.

Episode 6: Donna, James, and Maddy hear one of Laura's earlier tapes (apparently Jacoby would return them after listening). They notice an empty case with a later date and realize Jacoby must have her last tape, so they concoct a plan to get it back. Maddy dresses up as Laura (with a blonde wig), and repeat some of the lines from the tape to lure Jacoby out of his apartment/office, at which point Donna and James sneak in to snoop around.

Episode 7: The opening shot of the episode pans across the artificial tropical landscape of Jacoby's decor as Hawaiian music plays. Donna and James discover a collection of little cocktail umbrellas attached to various dates: the moon landing, Nixon's resignation... Then they find the tape they're looking for inside the coconut, along with Laura's necklace. Laura's friends listen to her final recording, and conclude that Jacoby was trying to help Laura, not kill her. James brings the tap to the sheriff's station where Cooper seems angry about the whole incident, especially since Jacoby has been hospitalized.

Episode 8: Truman plays Jacoby's tape with James and asks him how he got it (James lies). Cooper demands the necklace from James so that he can confront Jacoby with it in the hospital. Maddy is upset about Jacoby's condition ("maybe he wouldn't have been attacked if we hadn't" stolen his tape, she suggests), but Donna seems indifferent.

Episode 12: James asks Ed about bringing Nadine to Jacoby, and Ed tells him that the doctor is in Hawaii, recovering from the heart attack. I don't think Jacoby is ever mentioned again unless he's onscreen.



• Jacoby has an appropriately, if confoundingly, offbeat entry in the Access Guide. It asserts that he lived in Hawaii as a child rather than as a post-graduate, and describes him as "abjuring the Logical Positivist school of philosophy by turning instead to Spiderman and the National Enquirer. His "bests" are "the awesome number of dysfunctional families in Twin Peaks and 'my mailman, who argues with each envelope, analyzes the suitability of the stamp, a real case.'" We are told that his glasses (actually something the actor himself came up with) reflect the divide between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

• Jacoby cuts a striking, if shadowy, figure in Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Laura first encounters him while shooting rubber buffaloes with Johnny, and notices his attraction. But she's stunned that he is drawn to her very duality, and that when she begins seeing him as a patient he doesn't judge her or offer shocked reactions. He accepts the contradiction: "He did not mock my pain. He accepted it." Yet Laura says this makes her hate him sometimes, because he doesn't confirm her fears of turning into BOB. "Maybe it is the way he says it is: I've simply forgotten how to be loved." Jacoby's gift of a hot pink tape recorder causes Laura to write less in the diary, now that she's recording her thoughts for him. In the undated, penultimate entry, Laura recites all the things she told Jacoby at their last session (this includes some of the most memorable passages in the diary, including her description of the day her homecoming photo was taken). Jacoby's responses are not recorded. The entire portrait is an interesting reversal of the depiction we see on the series, in which a living, vibrant Jacoby peers into the impenetrable mystery of Laura Palmer. In the diary, we only glimpse the doctor through his patient's eyes, as a figure who can provide understanding yet remains somewhat vague and distant, unable to help her in the end.

• The diary and the first few episodes of season two provided Jacoby's last opportunities to be central to Twin Peaks. With Laura's mystery over, he faded into a decorative flourish in the town's tapestry. Only twenty-six years later, with the release of The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost, is Jacoby able to rise to prominence once again. His presence is scattered throughout the book - the illustrations even reflect the red/blue motif of his glasses - as is his very confusing older (or younger, depending on the totally screwy chronology) brother Robert. The Jacoby we know is introduced halfway through the novel, during the Ed/Nadine section. Apparently he was her therapist long before she awoke from the coma (his first report, following the loss of her eye, is included). We learn a great deal about Jacoby's history, including a sample from his book The Eye of God: Sacred Psychology in the Aboriginal Mind in which he details his ayahuasca trip. The back cover of the late sixties/early seventies paperback includes pull-quotes from Timothy Leary ("Jacoby talks the talk and he definitely walks the walk"), Jerry Garcia ("I felt like I was right there with him - maybe I was"), and, most tongue in cheek, Meher Baba ("I'm speechless").

• Jacoby's key passage, however, is held in reserve until the book is nearly over. Decades after the series allowed Laura to slip away without proper reflection, The Secret History finally permits one character, at least, to meditate on her legacy. We are presented an alternate version of Jacoby's trajectory; on March 19, the day he is tramping around with Ben Horne and Lana Milford on the show, the book finds him across the ocean on a beach in Kauai, awaiting the revocation of his license. In his final "case notes," Jacoby offers a stirring rumination on grief, evil, the false hopes of Western society, and his own inability to reconcile inner life and outer reality. He acknowledges Leland's culpability, and scolds himself for failing to recognize the signs of sexual abuse, while wondering what his "possession" really means ("a medicine man in the Amazon would take them both at their word, believe the story at face value and treat it accordingly"). "Creatures of unknown origin," Jacoby describes mankind, "trapped in time, pinned to a hostile rock whirling through indifferent and infinite space, clueless, inherently violent and condemned to death..."


• Because his pilot scene was drafted after the shooting script (at least the one available online), Jacoby's first scripted appearance is in episode 1. According to the teleplay, Cooper and Jacoby walk around the hallways of the Great Northern and discuss Johnny's condition (Coop's dislike from the pilot carries over; he "slow burns" when Jacoby performs a magic trick). Jacoby giggles a lot and offers some interesting information: during Laura's visits she'd read Johnny Sleeping Beauty and "take him out on the grounds hunting for rubber buffalo with his little suction-cupped bow and arrow set." Director Duwayne Dunham took this cue and actually moved the scene outside, with footage of Johnny shooting at the colorful buffalo in the background of the conversation. The scene was cut and never aired, though it's available on both the Gold Box DVD and Entire Mystery blu-ray sets. Jacoby's giggle doesn't quite come off as well as it did in the pilot, which may be why they lost the scene and took the character in a less overtly "mad scientist" direction. Dunham finally incorporated the footage of Johnny firing the rubber arrow twenty-four episodes later, when he returned to direct in season two: it is used to open a scene between Ben and Audrey. 

• We also would have heard more of Laura's tape when Jacoby listens, including a very surprising reveal, but that's a fascinating detail I'll discuss in an upcoming entry. Notably, Jacoby does not reveal Laura's necklace, suggesting it was a last-minute decision to make him the gloved hand from the pilot (when they needed a replacement for what was originally scripted). The moment carries over into the script for episode 2, where Jacoby finishes Laura's tape and places it inside the coconut (still no sign of the necklace).

• Jacoby has some very interesting deleted dialogue in episode 4, when discussing Hawaii. "Five years post-graduate work," he explains. "There are sound solutions for our diseased family structures in native Hawaiian culture." This leads Cooper to state, "So there were problems at home." Jacoby carries on to talk about ginger, brushing past the implicit question. As far as I know, this would have been the only time in the entire series that the detectives, or someone they are questioning, raises the prospect of a troubled domestic life for Laura. Perhaps Lynch and Frost wanted to keep the suggestion implicit, rather than allowing anyone to voice it.

• The DVD and blu-ray both include footage of Jacoby interacting with the Hornes at the Great Northern, as I've described in Johnny's entry (Audrey is told that she caused Johnny's condition by pushing him down the stairs when they were children, but Jacoby informs Sylvia that this is wrong: Johnny's condition was not caused by any external factor, but rather by emotional trauma).

• For the rest of the series, what we see of Jacoby is mostly what we get (signifying his loss of stature in the narrative). In the episode 17 script, Jacoby talks to the vice principal and explain Nadine's condition instead of just remaining silent. In episode 21, he was supposed to say Ben needed "a good price for cotton, metaphorically speaking," which may have hit a bit to close to the unsavory side of Ben's Confederate cosplay. Oddly, the scene from episode 28 also appears in the episode 27 script available online. I'm not sure if this is due to error or if it was shifted from one episode to the other (in which case it should be credited to Harley Peyton and Robert Engels rather than Barry Pullman).


• Why isn't Jacoby in the pilot script? By some accounts, Lynch and Frost had already cast Richard Beymer when they came across Russ Tamblyn's information through their casting director. They thought it would be a kick to use both of the infamous Jets (though the actors never appear together until the Civil War plot) and cooked up a character for Tamblyn on short notice. Tamblyn looked forward to experiencing the rustic charm of the location shoot, but his one scene was filmed quickly in a dingy Seattle hospital and his brief trip was spent at the airport hotel.

• Let us close on the soothing words with which Cooper hypnotizes Jacoby (presumably written by the doctor himself). Though credited to Robert Engels I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Frost stepped in to ghostwrite.

"You are standing on a smooth green carpet of grass. Your ball is fifteen feet from hole. Beyond the green, two pristine white sandtraps and a lily filled pond yawn out towards the emerald fairway. The hole seems to slowly drift away across the green towards the pond, carried by the summer wind. The green grows larger and larger ... the green engulfs you, enveloping you in a soft blanket of peace ... you stroke the ball, it drifts towards the hole and gently drops in its center ..."

SHOWTIME: Yes, Tamblyn is on the cast list for 2017. Mark Frost's book provides an exciting glimpse of the Jacoby we may meet again in the coming months: a man still haunted by Laura's memory and the terrors and wonders of human life that she, and his own experiences, embodied. Will we visit him in Hawaii? Will he remain in Twin Peaks? Does he retain a connection to Sarah, the last Palmer he can possibly help? Will he serve as a guide, or simply a companion, into the spirit world that gives abstract form to the mysteries he contemplated for so many years?

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.

It's hard to say what Hank enjoys more - being a bad guy or pretending (just barely) that he isn't one.


Tuesday, February 28, 1989
Hank Jennings emerges in the hallway of the state penitentiary to talk to his wife Norma. There's a menacing air about him right away, and his first few comments to her are brusque and vaguely threatening - why hasn't she been to see him? Norma is reserved. Then Hank leans in and, in a contrite, helpless whisper, pleads for assistance. "You gotta back me up in there, Norma, please. I gotta get out, they're putting the zap on me big time. I know I have no right to ask, and you have no reason to believe me, but I'll change. I swear on my  life I have changed. Give me a chance to prove it to you." It's disarming; we can see Norma simultaneously re-consider her aversion (maybe even feel bad about it), internalize the power she was projecting onto him, and embrace the relief that comes with the realization he needs her. This knockout concoction of fear, guilt, sympathy, attraction, and lingering unease is Hank's trademark. And it works. As he sits before the parole board, "earnestly" recalling the accident that sent him away on charges of manslaughter, Norma tells the officials she'll employ Hank at her diner and reluctantly concedes that they'll live "as man and wife." Hank smirks slightly. On his way out, he tells Norma, "Catch you later." That night, having received word that he'll be released the next day, Hank calls another woman in Twin Peaks: Josie Packard, a wealthy widow whose husband he killed (the vagrant killed in the accident was an alibi to avoid the more serious charge). He repeats the same phrase to her, more openly threatening this time, and sucks on the domino keepsake hanging from his keychain.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Hank plays the jukebox at the RR Diner and sits in a booth, listening with devilish bemusement to teenagers discussing the recent death of their friend. Norma and Shelly show up with bouffants from the beauty salon, but their cheerful facade falls away when they see Hank. He attempts to ingratiate himself to Norma and says he'll get started as soon as he finishes his coffee. That night, outside the Johnson hosehold, Hank blindsides Leo Johnson, a local drug dealer, punching him in the face and making his displeasure clear: "I told you to mind the store, not open your own franchise."

Thursday, March 2, 1989
Hank is meek and mild again at the diner the next day, cleaning the counter and chatting with Shelly Johnson, a waitress (and Leo's wife). He teases some crucial information from her: Big Ed Hurley has been helping out at the diner, ringing alarm bells in Hank's jealous mind. Hank steals a customer's cigarette lighter before Sheriff Truman and FBI Agent Dale Cooper walk in. Hank's ingratiating efforts are less successful with them, although he relishes their irritation. The sheriff lays out the terms of Hank's parole and scowls as his ex-friend ambles away. In the evening, Hank hangs out with Josie as she receives a call from local hotel magnate Ben Horne about burning down her own mill. Josie gives Hank the $90,000 she promised when he killed Andrew Packard for her, but he wants more. He explains that, depending how long he lives, his eighteen months locked away may be worth a higher amount. To drive home the point that she can't get rid of him so easily, Hank slashes both of their thumbs with a knife and makes a bloody pact by pressing the fingers together: "Once you're in business with someone, you're in business for life. Like a marriage." Back at the diner, Hank calls Catherine (sending her to the mill which Ben, via Leo, is about to burn). Then he switches into his other mode to woo Norma, wondering if she can ever forgive him, and in "aw, shucks" fashion declares, "I talk too big, that's my biggest fault." This folksy appeal taken care of, Hank makes another call, to Ben concerning Leo: "Time to black-flag that little firebug." Hank sneaks past patrols to find Leo inside his home, raising an axe above his head. Hank shoots through the window, knocking Leo back onto the couch, his chest soaked in blood as he gasps for air.

Friday, March 3, 1989
Hank amiably cleans the counter at the diner, pausing to salute Major Briggs on his way out the door. Hank also exchanges a knowing glance with the Major's teenage son, Bobby, when Norma returns to the RR and brushes off her husband. Hank visits the Great Northern that night, updating Ben and his brother Jerry about Josie, Catherine, and Leo (who somehow survived his shooting, but is now in a vegetative state). The Hornes pace in circles around Hank, relishing their condescension toward his lowly position: "Hank, you leave the creative thinking to the brothers Horne. You're a bicep. Relax until we say flex." Jerry grabs Hank's arm and they nearly come to blows, but instead Hank bursts into laughter and treats it all as a joke. The Hornes look uncomfortable as he throws his arms around them.

Saturday, March 4, 1989
Hank checks in with Truman and Cooper, mocking the deer's head mounted on the sheriff's wall and displaying his utter disregard for the lawmen.

Monday, March 6, 1989
Donna accepts a Meals on Wheels tray from Hank. Norma tells Hank that M.T. Wentz, famed travel writer and food critic is coming to Twin Peaks; together, they plot to impress him. Hank is enthusiastic and entrepreneurial, offering to buy decorations but also throwing in a little jab - he tells Norma to call Ed so he can direct any potential visitors from the gas station to the diner. That evening, a man appears at the diner and Norma and Hank excitedly serve him. But he wants a plain dish and seems uninterested in the restaurant's amenities. Hank steals his wallet and discovers the man is a state prosecutor. Late at night, in the midst of a thunderstorm, someone breaks into the diner and assaults Hank. At the end of this beatdown, the man wipes blood from Hank's face, presses their thumbs together, and delivers a message from Josie: "Blood brother, next time I take your head off."

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Hank strolls into the Great Northern as Bobby suspiciously hovers behind him. Emerging from a semi-secret passageway into Ben's office, Hank announces Cooper's arrival and then listens as Ben sets up the ransom payment for his daughter Audrey (who has been kidnapped). Once Cooper leaves, Hank re-emerges and Ben tells him Cooper won't be coming back. "If you can manage it, bring back Audrey and the briefcase." That night, Hank speaks to Ben over a walkie-talkie outside One Eyed Jack's, a Canadian bordello, as he watches Cooper, Truman, and Deputy Hawk Hill flee with Audrey. Jean Renault, Audrey's kidnapper, sneaks up behind Hank and holds a gun to his head while retrieving his wallet. He sees the state prosecutor's badge that Hank stole the night before.

Friday, March 10, 1989
After a long absence, Hank returns to the diner and tries to comfort a furious Norma ("forty-eight hours isn't late, it's missing," she points out). He says that he had to hide from some people in his past and she is soothed, telling him to ask for help next time. Hank's mother-in-law Vivian emerges from the kitchen; she immediately asks him about prison and invites them all to dinner. At the Great Northern, Vivian and Norma go to the restroom and leave Hank alone with Vivian's new husband, Ernie Niles, secretly a fellow ex-con who did time with Hank. Hank tacitly blackmails his nervous new father-in-law.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
At a wake, Hank puts together a plate of food for the widow and makes sure Norma notices his generosity. That evening, he and Ernie go on a "hunting trip" to One Eyed Jack's where they gamble, cavort with prostitutes, and plot a major drug operation with Jean and a corrupt Canadian Mountie, Preston King.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Norma asks the camo-clad duo about their hunting trip when they return to the diner and Hank tells her it was "a little fatiguing" (get it?). Ernie is bummed that Vivian has already gone back to Seattle but Hank reminds him he has some cocaine to move, and it'll be easier without her around. Then Hank pays Ben a visit. Much has changed such their conversation nine days ago. Ben is unshaven and unkempt, watching home movies on an old projector while ranting and raving about his travails (since Audrey was returned, Ben has been arrested for murder, lost his lawyer - the actual murderer, and was forced to sign the mill over to Catherine, who survived the fire). A bemused Hank informs Ben, "I don't work for you anymore," and tells him that that One Eyed Jack's has been taken over by Jean. "You screwed up, bossman," Hank scowls, holding Ben roughly by his collar, "You're out, Ben."

Friday, March 17, 1989
In the diner, Hank watches Norma as she touches Ed's hand and talks with him at the counter. Hank plays with his domino and turns away.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
Norma leaves the diner and barely bothers to explain her absence to Hank. He follows her to Ed's and hides inside until his wife leaves. "Oh, Ed," Hank snickers, "the thing we do for love." He attacks his cuckolder and is brutally beating him down until Ed's wife arrives home in a cheerleader costume. With superhuman strength she attacks Hank, effortlessly tossing him around the room and finally crashing him into her shelves.

Tuesday, March 21, 1989
Hank hobbles into the sheriff's office on crutches. He has been arrested for a parole violation (the drug operation turned into a sting in which Ernie was an informer and Jean was killed). Worse, he's been identified by a witness as the man who shot Leo. Hank seems unperturbed, proposing a deal to Truman: they'll drop the charge and offer immunity if he can turn in Andrew Packard's killer. Truman says no, and Hank points out that the sheriff is sleeping with the woman who did it. Deputy Hawk kicks Hank's crutch out from under him and drags the finally flustered criminal away, but the jab landed; Truman is quite upset. Norma visits Hank in his cell. He plays the humble, contrite husband once again, but knows he can no longer save their marriage. Instead he asks her for one last favor - provide him an alibi for the night of Leo's murder. She refuses and he grabs her through the bars, accusing her of being Ed's whore. "I'd rather be his whore than your wife," she snaps back, and exits. Hank shouts after her, furious that his snaky charisma no longer does the job. That's it; Hanks three-week experiment has failed...he can't balance the roles of active criminal, paroled ex-con, and dutiful husband. He's returning to where he really belongs.

When I think of Hank, three observations came to mind. First, although all associated Twin Peaks lore underscores his status as a local, and he's mentioned as early as the pilot, I never really think of him as "belonging" to Twin Peaks the way most of the other major characters do. Somehow, he reads like an interloper from a more "realistic" series. Maybe it's because he shows up after the pilot (though I don't feel this way about others, like Maddy or Jerry, or even season two additions like Harold), maybe it's because we meet him in a very un-Peaksian state prison - the very worldly criminal is injected into the already dangerous but dreamy small town like a plague bacillus (to paraphrase Churchill on Lenin), maybe it's because the nature of Hank and especially Mulkey's acting style stands at odds with the more archetypal characters who surround him. On the other hand - maybe because of this slight "apartness"? - Hank does serve as a hub for the many characters and subplots of season one. Just look at the eclectic ensemble he interacts with, by far the longest list so far: twenty-two characters (more than a quarter of this whole series) from wildly different storylines with divergent tones.

Second, partly for both halves of the above observation, Hank looks much more like a Mark Frost than a David Lynch creation. While Frost had just as much of a hand in crafting the town of Twin Peaks, he was always interested in expanding it and linking it up to the real world and other genres. We'll further explore the ramifications of this in a couple entries, but for now we can note that Hank could be a character straight out of Hill Street Blues. Maybe that sums up his difference from so many other Twin Peaks figures - the guy feels very urban. As such, he belongs more to the author of The Believers (New York), Storyville (New Orleans), The List of 7 (London), and Buddy Faro (Los Angeles) than to Lynch (who was drawn to rural or small-town worlds in Blue Velvet, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, and The Straight Story; even his L.A. portraits are more otherworldly than grittily metropolitan). Hank is a big city hoodlum plunked down in a frontier town. It's no coincidence that his biggest episode - the season one finale (written and directed by Frost) - has perhaps the most urban vibe of the whole series.

Thirdly, I really appreciate this character for some reason - I especially enjoy the hell out of this performance. Hank doesn't click with everyone. Some viewers find his shtick grating and unconvincing but from my own earliest episode guide I praised Mulkey's work: "he seems likable enough but, like Norma, we get the sense that his pleas for a second chance aren't quite sincere - that look in his eyes is at once vulnerable and cunning." In a later review I noted that the actor "does wonders mixing baleful facial expressions with sinister subtext." Hank doesn't correspond to most of the qualities that draw me to Twin Peaks. As already noted, he doesn't fit the mystic Pacific Northwest flavor, even in season one he has nothing to do with Laura Palmer, he barely interacts with Agent Cooper, and we can't even imagine the existence of a surreal spirit world when he's skulking about onscreen. Nonetheless, I really appreciate him on his own terms. And in a certian thematic sense, he does link up with the show's ethos: this is a character who presents a different front depending who he's talking to. There's also a sharp day/night split to his work - good-natured, humble husband in the sunlit diner and leather-clad hooligan when the (abnormally frequent) gibbous moon casts its wan glow over the landscape. In a way, Hank plays as Frost's effort to internalize the Blue Velvet dynamic within his own very different sensibility...another reason Hank is as intriguing as he is, at times, incongruous.

Hank's season one/season two split is more subtle than many other townspeople's. His stories don't really change - in both seasons he's playing puppy-dog to Norma at the diner, dabbling in the drug trade, and working as an enforcer for Ben Horne. However, it's hard not to see his character as being slightly "demoted." Daniel Smith has observed that Hank is a candidate for the top villain of the first season. He easily clobbers the previously intimidating Leo, has an eye on every corner of the Twin Peaks underworld, and always seems to be in control of the given situation, smiling with sinister authority in his badass leather jacket. If he "works" for Josie and Ben, he quickly plays his power hand against the former and maintains a respectable distance from the latter. And of course his duality - however unconvincing the "good" side - makes him an ideal figurehead for Twin Peaks' unique brand of evil.

But this is quickly undone in the second season. As early as the premiere, the Hornes assert their authority over him, even if he cleverly turns the tables at scene's end. The M.T. Wentz shenanigans display a light, goofy side to his character and then he's subjected to a series of beatdowns or hostage situations, from Jonathan to Jean to Nadine to Hawk. Hank lords it over Ernie, which isn't hard to do, but really his only moment of real power in season two is the confrontation with Ben (and even Mr. Horne is a shadow of his former self). Ultimately, Hank is not only undone by the wacky antics of Nadine, but the bratty disregard of Bobby Briggs, who almost whimsically decides to turn him in when the cops finally ask who shot Leo. However, Hank manages to maintain his cool through most of the series - even as Truman brusquely confronts him with murder charges, he seems unflustered. Indeed, right up to the moment when it finally becomes clear that Norma isn't going to protect him, Hank is able to execute his bullshit brilliantly.

There are roughly three sets of actors cast in Twin Peaks. There are those whom casting director Johanna Ray found and advocated for, including some she cast in earlier or simultaneous David Lynch projects (she worked with him from Blue Velvet onward). There are a handful of actors whom David Lynch brought from his own pre-Ray work, like Jack Nance, Catherine Coulson, Charlotte Stewart, and Kyle MacLachlan. And then there's "the Minnesota mafia," a surprising number of actors connected to the Frosts from their years in Minneapolis. Most appear in Invitation to Love or bit parts (Hank's parole board, for example), but the most prominent Frost friend is probably Chris Mulkey. Mulkey took Warren Frost's acting class when he was a wrestler at the University of Minnesota; he later co-wrote and co-starred (with his late wife Karen Landry) in an independent Minneapolis-based film, Patti Rocks, which he likes to highlight. However, both it and Twin Peaks are just small drops in the bucket of his filmography. Mulkey has one of the most astonishingly prolific and remarkably consistent careers of any actor we've covered, with two hundred twenty-five credits to his name.

He has shown up in such films as First Blood, 48 Hrs. (with Twin Peaks co-star David Patrick Kelly), The Hidden (starring Kyle MacLachlan as another offbeat FBI agent), a voice part in Rain Man, Gas, Food, Lodging, Broken Arrow, The Fan, Behind Enemy Lines, Bulworth, Mysterious Skin (heavily influenced by Fire Walk With Me), Cloverfield, The Purge, Captain Phillips, and Whiplash. His TV guest spots include Baretta, M*A*S*H, Charlie's Angels, The Waltons, CHiPS, The Dukes of Hazzard, Magnum, P.I., Matlock, Beauty and the Beast, Thirtysomething, Grace Under Fire, Murder, She Wrote, Blossom, Walker, Texas Ranger, Touched by an Angel, CSI Miami, JAG, Lost, Criminal Minds, NCIS, CSI:NY, 24 (starring Fire Walk With Me alum Kiefer Sutherland, of course), CSI, Justified (starring future Twin Peaks actor Laura Dern), Scandal, Agent Carter, and Chicago Justice among many others- basically a history of network TV over the past four decades! And that's not including recurring guest roles on four episodes each of Boardwalk Empire and Friday Night Lights, five episodes of Arresting Behavior, nine episodes of Saving Grace, seventeen episodes of Bakersfield P.D., and four seasons (spanning the millennium) and eighty-three episodes as Colliar Sims on the soap opera Any Day Now. He currently has eleven projects in various stages of production, and is also a blues musician. Ten years ago, he discussed his musical, cinematic, and televisual work with Twin Peaks Archive. (film pictured: First Blood, 1982)


Hank's first appearance is written by Robert Engels, another member of the Minneapolis Frost squad. Engels also co-writes two Hank episodes with Harley Peyton (and a third with Peyton, Mark Frost, and Jerry Stahl), while Peyton pens three solo scripts featuring Hank. Frost writes another three of Hank's scripts alone, and brother Scott Frost writes Hank once. Barry Pullman writes two Hank teleplays and Tricia Brock authors one (only Lynch is absent from the list of writers, aside from his "story by" credit in the season two premiere). Hank is directed by Tim Hunter, Lesli Linka Glatter (twice), Caleb Deschanel (three times - once very briefly), Frost, Lynch (twice), Todd Holland (twice), Graeme Clifford, Tina Rathborne, and Duwayne Dunham.

Hank is onscreen for roughly forty-five minutes. He is in thirty scenes (by far our record at this point) in fourteen episodes, taking place over just three weeks. He's featured the most in episode 7, when he threatens Josie, sets up Catherine, and shoots Leo. His primary location is the diner. He shares the most screentime with Norma. He is one of the top ten characters in episodes 11, 15, 17, and 18, and one of the top five characters in episode 7.




The Pilot: Hank is one of the few characters introduced in the pilot without actually being seen (Albert is another). When Ed and Norma meet at the Road House, she encourages him to leave Nadine and he asks about Hank. "I'm going to give him his walkin' papers," she reports. Ed worries that Hank will get parole soon (introducing the idea that he's in prison).

Episode 3: Norma meets with Hank's smarmy parole officer, who hits on her until she reminds him her husband is in prison for killing a man.

Episode 4: The parole officer prepares Norma for Hank and nervously apologizes for his behavior the day before. At the diner, Norma and Shelly talk about having two men each (and being married to the wrong ones), and then Norma receives a phone call. Hank has received parole; she seems upset. That night, Josie opens an envelope and discovers a sketch of a domino just before Hank calls her.

Episode 5: Norma tells Ed that Hank is coming home and it wasn't the right time to tell him she's leaving. Ed says he can't leave Nadine now either, and they decide not to see each other for a while.

Episode 7: Leo is about to kill Bobby when Hank shoots him. Bobby peeks out the window and sees Hank's face.

Episode 8: Ed tells Cooper how Nadine lost her eye (the story involves Norma running off with Hank for a weekend when she was still dating Ed). Bobby has a flashback of Hank's face outside Leo's window when he sees him in the diner.

Episode 11: Josie tells Jonathan there may be a problem with Hank, and he says he'll deal with it.

Episode 19: Ben hires Bobby to follow Hank; Bobby takes pictures of him meeting with Jean, the Mountie, and Ernie at Dead Dog Farm. Audrey gets her hands on these photos and shows them to Cooper.

Episode 20: Ernie asks where Hank is during the drug deal, and tries to use his absence as an excuse to call the whole thing off.

Episode 21: Hawk tells Truman that Hank missed the Dead Dog Farm sting because he was in the hospital, supposedly having been hit by a bus. Hawk arrested him for parole violation. Norma tells Ed a different Hank excuse: he was hit by a tree. Ed chuckles and tells her the truth: "That tree was a redwood named Nadine."

Episode 22: Bobby finally tells Cooper and Truman that Hank shot Leo. Nadine apologizes to Norma for beating up Hank, but says she was worried about Ed. Norma, who is lying in bed naked with Ed as Nadine tells her this, could care less about Hank at this point and thanks Nadine. At the diner, Truman tells Norma that Hank shot Leo and is going away for a long time. Norma is relieved.

• The Access Guide details the 1968 season of the Twin Peaks Steeplejacks, an all-star high school football squad that included Hank alongside Truman, Ed, Hawk, and Toad. Dubbed, "the Lonesome Half-Back," Hank "refused to practice and eventually refused to join the huddle. But he could run! Easily the most gifted of the team, but with an attitude that bordered on anti-social, Hank would stand six or seven yards away from the huddle and wait for the team to come to the line of scrimmage. Then, through an elaborate set of hand signals from the head of the Science and Industry Club, who was receiving the plays from Coach Hobson's son, Sammy, Hank would be given the play. The effect, of course, was mesmerizing and brilliantly effective. Most of the time Hank was unstoppable." Yet Hank is suspended from one game, and the team is only saved from losing by a ferocious downpour. They are forced to punt sixteen times and the game ends with no score. The team never loses all season.

• According to Jennifer Lynch's book, Laura mentions Hank in her diary on Christmas Eve - he "killed a man on the highway late last night, coming back on the Lucky 21 from the border, I think." She says she's "never been really impressed with" him and she's "glad he'll be away for a while. Norma always seems so upset by him. I'm sorry for Norma. Not for Hank."

• Hank gets quite a bit of play in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks. We meet his grandfather, an alcoholic ne'er-do-well (the family's disreputable status is underlined) who encountered a U.F.O. in the late forties but changed his story after a stern, vaguely threatening visit from Man in Black Dougie Milford.

• The Secret History introduces Hank himself in the Andrew Packard file. His involvement with Andrew's death is reiterated, but we also receive an alternate account of that storied football season in 1968. The team is called the Lumberjacks this time and Hank is a fullback. They make it to the state championship but there the story takes a twist. Hank fumbles the ball on the two-yard line with less than a minute to play, losing the game. It turns out Hank knew Jean long before the kingpin pulled a gun on him in the woods; according to this version of events, Jean fixed the game by buying off Hank, offering him a Chevy pickup and the start of a career working for his gang. Truman and Hank have their falling out over the fumble.

• Before the fight with Truman, Secret History reveals that Hank was recruited to the Bookhouse Boys by the future sheriff and his older brother Frank (also a future sheriff). Oddly enough, Hank's favorite book still sits on the shelf with the other Bookhouse Boys' tomes in a photo from the late eighties: James M. Cain's Double Indemnity. We're also informed that Hank took to the work of Jack Kerouac, Raymond Chandler, and Irwin Shaw (an acclaimed playwright and novelist probably best known for the seventies bestseller Rich Man, Poor Man, albeit after Hank's Bookhouse days).

• According to Secret History, Hank, who has worked at Norma's family diner for years (his mother was a lifelong waitress there), steals the letters Ed sends Norma from Vietnam. He makes her think Ed has dropped her and slowly wins her over himself - obviously a very different version of their courtship from what we hear on the series.

• Hank is probably the only character in Twin Peaks with a recorded death between the end of the original series and the start of the new one. Around 1992, Frost tells us, Hank is stabbed in prison by a distant Renault relation. He is able to scrawl out one last plea for sympathy, apologizing profusely for his life yet still making excuses "to my former friends and my former wife Norma": "I loved you all, in my own way as best I could, but that wasn't enough."


• Before we get to the outtakes (which will take up most of this section), I wanted to observe one nice little moment that actually is onscreen, when Hank tells Ben off. While Ben rambles, Hank casually lifts Ben's lighter from the desk and takes it with him when he goes, always the petty thief.

• In the episode 8 script, Hank sniffs a chemical to make him cry and pretends, for Norma's sake, to be upset about what happened to Shelly and Leo. He suggest buying her flowers and offers Norma money.

• In episode 9, Hank was supposed to buy Norma a GTO. He shows her a picture of it in the diner and comes on to her strong: "The car I'd get you one day. Remember? Tell me you remember, Norma." After Hank leaves the sheriff's office, Truman tells Cooper the reason their friendship ended: "One day he set his heart on Norma. And he took her from Big Ed. 'Never cheat a pal.' That was our code. Hank broke it."

• In the episode 12 script, Hank shoves Tojamura's face into a plate of food, mistaking "him" for Jonathan. He realizes his mistake when it's too late. He contacts Ben from outside One Eyed Jack's before as well as after the raid, informing him that Cooper and Truman have shown up hours before the intended drop-off at another location.

• As written in episode 14, Norma notes Hank's absence and wanders if he left because he knows her mother's coming to town ("Hank's kind of allergic to her," she says).

• A deleted scene from episode 16 reveals how much pressure Hank needed to apply to get Ernie onboard with his drug scheme. "Remember that fourth floor game room," he reminisces about prison. "Where the boys did business? You played along or they tossed you over the rail. Four floors down to the cement. Guy landed it sounded like a cannon." Then he tells Ernie about One Eyed Jack's, and how he's going to steal money from Vivian and finally drives the point home: "we got a fourth floor on the outside, too. Don't make me give you the rail, Ern."

• Episode 17's script depicts Hank and Ernie leaving for their "hunting" trip as Vivian watches fondly and Norma airs her suspicions.

• On the audiobook for The Secret History, Chris Mulkey himself narrates Hank's final words. It's a fitting farewell from the actor to Twin Peaks.


SHOWTIME: No, Mulkey is not on the cast list for 2017. We know how Hank died - or at least, we think we do, depending on the trustworthiness of The Secret History's "alternative facts." Was there ever the slightest bit of integrity beneath Hank's endless manipulation and selfishness? We never quite knew on the series, despite our suspicions to the contrary, and now we never will.

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.

Nadine emerges from a world of loneliness and desperation into a world of strength and innocence, but too much of her happiness relies on Twin Peaks' most dangerous resource: denial.


Friday, February 17, 1989
A cheerful Nadine Hurley, housewife of auto mechanic Big Ed, enters the RR Diner with her husband. Her mood immediately changes when Norma Jennings, the restaurant's owner, grins from the counter at Ed. Nadine storms out of the diner, and Ed quickly follows.

Friday, February 24, 1989
Nadine repeatedly reminds Ed to hang up the drapes in her living room, shouting to him from the house that sits near Ed's gas station. At night, she frantically runs the drapes back and forth.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
Nadine and Norma run into each other inside a hardware store. Nadine is buying cotton balls - she's had an epiphany about "completely silent drape runners" and plans to patent the idea. Cotton will apparently be the secret ingredient. Nadine tells Norma that she came up with the idea while waiting for her husband to get out of the hospital following a bar fight.

Sunday, February 26, 1989
Furiously works out on her rowing machine, Nadine pauses only to yell at Ed when he steps on the drape runners spread out over the floor, dripping grease on top of the cotton. Nadine is so angry she pulls hard on the rower's handles and actually manages to bend the metal. That evening, she's overjoyed to see Ed, embracing him and telling him that the greased cotton has effectively quieted the drape runners. He saved her project after all!

Monday, February 27, 1989
As they prepare for the funeral of a local girl who was recently murdered, Ed holds Nadine in his arms. She remembers how she loved him in high school but he was way out of her league - Norma was his pretty girlfriend while Nadine was "just a little brown mouse." Ed hears a motorcycle outside and comments that his nephew James has arrived, but Nadine has trouble remembering who James is. The teenager rushes into the house to announce that he's not going to the funeral before storming out. However, James does show up to the funeral. The lawmen standing near Nadine at the gravesite race after him when he gets into a fight.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
A dejected - or rather, "rejected"- Nadine savors a box of bonbons and lives vicariously through the soap opera on television. Ed, getting ready to head out for the night, comforts her. The patent office has turned down her invention, and she's ready to give up despite Ed's encouragement. She made many plans for how they would spend their newfound wealth and didn't anticipate the world's disinterest in silent drape runners. With Ed gone that evening, Nadine dons a pink dress, fills a bowl with pills, and sets up a little blanket on the rug, preparing a poignant picnic suicide. "Goodbye," she whispers, as she places her suicide note in its final resting place. When Ed returns she is sprawled out on the carpet.

Friday, March 3, 1989
Ed sits by a comatose Nadine in the hospital, holding her hand and staring at her forlornly.

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Nadine is chained to her hospital bed, since she broke leather restraints earlier. Ed sings "On Top of Old Smokey" to her when she suddenly awakens, clapping and chanting. Not only is Nadine pumping abnormal amounts of adrenaline, she believes that she is eighteen years old, recovering from tonsilitis and looking forward to cheerleader practice.

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Nadine returns home with Ed. Again she doesn't recognize James, although she concludes that he's her classmate, and she's horrified that her parents aren't home. Ed reassures her that they're out of town and Nadine accidentally tears the door off the refrigerator.

Wednesday, March 8, 1989
Back from a shopping excursion, Nadine begins making out with Ed. She's excited they have the place all to themselves and looks forward spending the night with her "boyfriend."

Thursday, March 9, 1989
The Hurleys - er, Ed Hurley and Nadine Butler - visit the diner. Nadine is surprised to see Norma behind the counter, and laughs when she says she's worked there for twenty years ("What a kidder!"). She asks the waitress Shelly if they go to school together and explains that her parents are away in Europe. When her shake arrives she grips it so tight that it explodes. Nadine stares at her red hand (with blood or cherry?) and kisses Ed aggressively.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
At a wake, Nadine wonders if the others can see her panties reflected in her shiny shoes. That afternoon she goes to Twin Peaks High School, eager to try out for the cheerleading squad. Ed arranges things with the vice principal. At tryouts, Nadine executes an admirable routine and then grabs one of the jocks and tosses him fifty feet in the air, sending him crashing into a volleyball net far away. The gathered students and coaches are stunned.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Nadine chats with Donna Hayward at her locker, wondering if she's still dating Mike Nelson (she isn't). Nadine has a crush on the blonde athlete and hits on him in the gym. The wrestling coach discovers her there and, amazed by her strength, invites her to join the wrestling team.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Coach Wingate tells the story of a racist coach who allowed a superb black player onto his football team, and says that Nadine has the same right to compete. She challenges Mike, the state champion, and asks him on a date while kicking his ass.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
In her cheerleader uniform, Nadine stops in at the diner. Mike is reading the newspaper at the counter and makes it perfectly clear he wants absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Nadine, period, end of story. She doesn't take the hint and smooches him before making her exit. Returning to her home, Nadine finds Ed being throttled by Norma's husband Hank Jennings and she slams her bookbag into his head, punching, spinning, and throwing him around the room.

Monday, March 20, 1989
Returning from a weekend event ("the district finals"), Nadine casually climbs into bed with Ed and Norma. She explains that she won the contest but was disqualified because she used an illegal maneuver. However, she shares her second-place trophy with her husband and his lover. On her way out the door, she tells them, "I know about you guys," but says she doesn't mind because she and Mike are "serious" too.

Tuesday, March 21, 1989
Sadly but firmly, Nadine explains to Ed that she and Mike are in love, and that they spent the whole night together during the recent away trip. It's time for Nadine and Ed to "break up."

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Dr. Jacoby meets with Ed and Nadine to discuss their "breakup." Jacoby and Ed talk amongst themselves as Nadine wonders what the big deal is. When she winks she realizes something is wrong and holds her hand to her face. "I think I've gone blind in my right eye," she marvels, oblivious to the eye patch that's been there all along. That night, she checks in to the Great Northern with Mike, disguised as "Mr. and Mrs. Hinkman." A couple teenage girls recognize Mike from school and they giggle as an angry Nadine crushes the desk clerk's bell.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
Nadine and Mike are elated when they check out, obviously sated from a night of passionate lovemaking. Nadine wears Mike's fedora and twirls a lollipop in her mouth as they strolls through the lobby.

Friday, March 24, 1989
Nadine sits down with Shelly and Donna at the Road House to register for the Miss Twin Peaks pageant. She looks up, startled, as her boyfriend's buddy lets out a large whoop. Mike winks at her and she winks back.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
A chorus line rehearses under the (very) watchful eye of Tim Pinkle. "What kind of a dance is this anyway?" a skeptical Nadine asks as Pinkle leers. That afternoon, Nadine runs a slide show for Mike, Ed, Norma, and Jacoby, displaying all of her recent wrestling triumphs. Jacoby steers the conversation back to the two couples, encouraging Ed to reveal something to Nadine: he's going to marry Norma. Nadine begins to tweak out, forcing a smile as she proclaims that she and Mike are getting married too! She may break Mike's hand, if his scream of pain is any indication. Her manic energy needs another channel, so that evening Nadine performs in the Miss Twin Peaks show. She eagerly awaits the announcement that she has been crowned...and then a moment later she stands stunned in defeat as all the other contestants celebrate another local girl (only one other contestant, coincidentally also a redhead, seems as upset by her loss as Nadine). Nadine can barely muster sullen applause before the lights go out and a strobe starts flickering. Something explodes inside the Road House and Nadine rushes offstage, inadvertently releasing a sandbag that lands on her head and knocks her unconscious. Back at her house, she recovers from her wound while Mike confesses his love for her. Nadine is horrified - she doesn't know who he is and demands that Ed makes him leave. Then she notices Norma smiling by Ed's side in the living room, and her distress only grows. And where are her drape runners? Nadine races around the room, confused and upset, and Ed asks her old she is. "Thirty-five, you moron!" she shouts before breaking into sobs as he holds her close.

Nadine is one of Twin Peaks' wackiest characters, hell, maybe the wackiest of all. Yet she is also one of its saddest figures. When she's handled right, Nadine captures the cross-section between absurdist comedy and poignant desperation as few others can. Throughout season one, and during certain moments in season two (especially in her surprisingly heartrending final scene), this quality comes across. For much of her run, however, Nadine - or Super Nadine, as fans commonly refer to this iteration - is a harbinger of the show's goofy, over-the-top inclinations. There are moments in the Nadine narrative that could come straight from a Nickelodeon show of the same era (the terrible slow-motion, reverse action, egregious overdub, and bizarre sound effect that accompany the already ridiculous conceit of her tossing a jock in the air mark this as a jump-the-shark moment for many). As such, Nadine tends to be polarizing. My first time through, I was entirely put off by the tenor of Nadine's material, and came to dread her appearances. As with Dick Tremayne, it was The Twin Peaks Podcast that urged me to see her in a different light. The hosts, especially one of the first-time viewers, absolutely adored Nadine's antics, savoring the fervor with which the writers - and especially the actress - committed to this conceit.

I began to really appreciate Wendy Robie's dedicated performance; however ambivalent I am about the decision to take the character in this direction, Robie plays the hell out of every scene and clearly loves and cherishes the character she's playing. Besides, there's something uncannily appropriate about Nadine's condition, isn't there? On a show whose central theme may be denial, Nadine embodies the desire to stuff her shadow away. She also subverts some of the show's tropes - in a narrative about women terrorized by men, she is one of the few women to terrorize men (she even gets to dispatch one of the main bad guys). Nadine wistfully dreams of pleasing Ed, but her fantasies have a way of consistently shifting away from stereotypes of feminine appeal. Her obsession with drape runners, initially a trademark of the domestic homemaker, transforms into an entrepreneurial quest to become the family's primary breadwinner. He back-to-school adventure begins by framing her as a chirpy cheerleader but within days she's pinning down the state's top wrestlers and carving a space for herself as Twin Peaks' strongest citizen.

In short, Nadine has always wanted to be Norma (or what she perceives as Norma) but she's an entirely different person. If Ed is unhappy and deserves something else, so does Nadine. Her tragedy is not her "abnormality" but her desire to be "normal" in the first place, convincing herself that her talents are useful only insofar as they can conform to the cultural role she wants to play. From a certain perspective, Nadine is not really abandoning reality for fantasy. She's embracing who she really is (albeit along with a set of lies - her youth, the status of her relationship to Ed - to remove her internalized stigma). This reminds me of a conversation I had with David Lynch scholar Martha Nochimson, whose take on Mulholland Drive didn't quite gibe with my own. I noted that the final section of the film feels much more "real" than the first two-thirds, regardless of whether one frames this as a dream, alternative universe, or other scenario. However, she observed that while Diane Selwyn's world is different from Betty's, and certainly darker, that doesn't make it more real. "Betty has a lot more possibility at the beginning than she does at the end. Having possibility is real, but the power structure of the industry takes her possibilities away from her. That's real too, but not more real than having options." So too with Nadine.

When the show begins, Nadine is a one-note character, hilarious but quite limited in her shtick (her screentime in the pilot amounts to less than a minute, mostly spent yelling at Ed). Amused by her performance, the creators seize upon one element - those damned drape runners - and concoct an entire season's storyline from this detail. Nadine continues to be built in this manner. Small moments from season one (breaking the exercise equipment, recollecting high school, not remembering James) are enlarged into major character traits in season two. That is how the writers consciously construct her, but at times it feels like there's an unconscious hand at work too. The character keeps disappearing further and further inside a manic escapism that, at certain key points, echoes the show's own (mis)steps. Initially she has one foot in her painfully awkward and lonely social reality, the other in a heightened cartoon vision. That balance between naturalism and surrealism can't be maintained. Nadine retreats into her own private narrative just as the show itself becomes torn between different impulses. In particular, the cheerleading scene - easily her worst moment, and the moment her arc completely confirms its cartoonish direction - arrives in the very episode where Twin Peaks veers wildly off-course. Indeed, every character at Leland's wake is about as self-absorbed and out of touch as Nadine is, just without her excuse. When Nadine finally crashes back to reality, her awakening occurs in the same finale that jolts the entire show from its reverie, restoring the dark, poignant power of the pilot. Nadine may stir ambivalence in many viewers, but it's an ambivalence deeply rooted in the show itself.

Robie was a Seattle theater actress in the late eighties, when Lynch and Frost cast her in a small part on their TV pilot. She threw herself into the role and impressed not only them but other filmmakers. She worked steadily through the nineties and zeroes, in several Wes Craven films and other horror movies and thrillers. Most notably she and Big Ed himself, Everett McGill, play a homicidal couple in Craven's The People Under the Stars, shot soon after Twin Peaks was cancelled. As Wikipedia notes, "she is known for playing eccentric, mentally disturbed characters," so obviously her first role defined her subsequent work. Robine hasn't appeared onscreen much in the past ten years, but continues to cherish her years on Twin Peaks. She recently participated in an Entertainment Weekly retrospective both the original and the upcoming series. In one of three alternate magazine covers, she poses with McGill and James Marshall (who played James). And in an accompanying video, she declares, "I don't think I've ever played a character who hurt as much as Nadine." (film pictured: The People Under the Stairs, 1991)


Given her high number of episodes, it makes sense to start with who didn't write Nadine (Jerry Stahl and Scott Frost) and who didn't direct her (Uli Edel and Stephen Gyllenhaal). Every other writer and director had a shot at her character. Season one Nadine ("drape runners!") was written by David Lynch, Mark Frost, and Harley Peyton, while season two, a.k.a. Super Nadine was written by Frost and Peyton, as well as Robert Engels, Barry Pullman, and Tricia Brock. The drape runner phase was directed by Lynch, Duwayne Dunham, Tina Rathborne, Caleb Deschanel, and Frost, while those same directors (except for Frost) were joined by Lesli Linka Glatter, Graeme Clifford, Todd Holland, Diane Keaton, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, and Tim Hunter for Super Nadine.

Peyton has claimed credit for the Super Nadine/high school wrestler subplot, drawing from several throwaway moments in season one (the Lynch-directed scene where she bends the exercise equipment, written by Lynch and Frost, and perhaps also the scene when she remembers her high school days and doesn't recognize James' name - the very first Peyton-penned Nadine scene). Peyton also writes/co-writes more Nadine episodes than any other writer, nine in all (Frost writes eight). Lynch directs her in five episodes plus the film (she's not in episode nine, the only time she's dropped from a Peyton episode too). Dunham and Glatter direct her three times, Rathborne and Deschanel twice.

Nadine is onscreen for roughly forty-six minutes. She is in thirty-four scenes in twenty-two episodes plus the deleted scenes collection from the feature film, taking place in a little over five weeks. This is the first character in these studies to appear in a majority of episodes (in fact, more than two-thirds of the series) - we won't reach another character with this many episodes until we're inside the top twenty. She's featured the most in episode 28, when she participates in Miss Twin Peaks. Her primary location is the Hurley home. She shares the most screentime with Ed. With her screentime stretched out over so many episodes, she is one of the top ten characters only once, in episode 17 (just barely beating out Ernie Niles for the tenth spot). From now on, every character will make the top ten at least three times.




The Pilot: Ed explains Nadine's drape obsession to Norma at the Road House. They plan to leave their spouses. She tells him, "don't do it for me, do it for yourself. It's Tammy Wynette time, darlin'."

Episode 1: Truman notes Ed's bandage and asks if Nadine "got wind of" him and Norma. "Harry," Ed observes, "if Nadine'd gotten wind of me and Norma I'd be playing harp for the Heavenly All-Stars." Donna's parents meet James for the first time, and Doc Will Hayward asks if his aunt is "the woman with the patch." James responds that "she's a real character."

Episode 2: Cooper mentions a note about "Jack with One Eye" that he received under his hotel door; Hawk comments, "Sounds like Nadine, Big Ed Hurley's wife," before Truman mentions a casino called One Eyed Jack's.

Episode 5: While Nadine "is over at that patent attorney in Fairville," Ed and Norma decide not to see each other for a while. Ed explains that Nadine's not well and now isn't the right time to break up their marriages.

Episode 8: Ed tells Cooper the story of how he married Nadine - and how she lost her left eye. When they were still teenagers, Norma ran away with Hank, and a jealous Ed fell into Nadine's arms; "There was something so sweet and helpless about her." They got drunk and impulsively married - before Ed could broach the subject of a divorce or annulment they went on their honeymoon. During a hunting trip Ed accidentally shot out Nadine's eye. Later, Norma sees Ed holding Nadine's hand and turns away slowly.

Episode 19: Mike begs Donna to help him get rid of Nadine. She finds the whole situation highly amusing and refuses, suggesting maybe it would be a good idea for him to date an older woman.

Episode 21: With Nadine away at her wrestling match at Knife River, Ed discusses her condition with Doc. He's worried that she wants to start dating high school boys, and given her strength "she's liable to kill a young kid" (he compares sex with Nadine to being run over by a lumber truck). As pointed out on a Twin Peaks podcast (I can't remember which one), the exchange is probably one of the more uncomfortable in the Nadine subplot, highlighting its most troublesome aspects despite its cheerful delivery. The characters switch casually between referring to Ed as Nadine's lover and parent, and Nadine as a predatory adult and vulnerable child. Norma tells Ed that Hank was hit by a tree, but Ed tells her "that tree was a redwood named Nadine."

Episode 26: Mike asks Bobby if he has "any idea what the combination of sexual maturity and superhuman strength can result in?" His whispered answer is what causes Bobby to shout, drawing everyone's attention at the Road House (where Nadine is signing up for Miss Twin Peaks).


• Nadine is mentioned once, in passing, in Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer: "I wasn't going nuts, like Nadine Hurley or anything, but I was still feeling like I was in a dream."

• We learn quite a bit more about Nadine in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Her mother experienced mental illness and was hospitalized when Nadine was a sophomore. Like mother, like daughter; Nadine froze up in the hallway a few days later and spent the following six-months at "a privately-owned facility" (her father invented a flame retardant and had a bit of money so he sent his daughter to one of the better institutions). When she returned to school, she claimed that she had been to France and began dressing in a more bohemian fashion. We also read plenty of information that contradicts the series. Nadine's maiden name is Gertz, not Butler, and she meets Ed years after high school. He nearly runs her over while she's riding a John Deere lawnmower into his station (shades of The Straight Story). Norma has been married to Hank for years at this point, and the hunting accident occurs not on a honeymoon but on Ed's trip into the woods with Truman (Nadine isn't even supposed to be there - she's spying on them). Most of this information is conveyed in a file written by Hawk, who is rather brusquely dismissive of Nadine's condition, considering it an automatic disqualification to be Ed's wife (Andy informs him of Nadine's mental history at the wedding reception; Hawk's describes his "heart sinking"). Jacoby also files a report following the loss of her eye. He speculates that the "accident" was willed by her and that she targeted her own left eye specifically because it connects to the right, intuitive side of her brain - she was sensing something (Ed's love for Norma) that she didn't want to.


• Nadine's return to high school probably echoes and/or draws upon a number of sources, but the most obvious antecedent is Peggy Sue Got Married. In that film, Kathleen Turner plays a woman attending her twenty-fifth high school anniversary. She faints and wakes up in the body of her eighteen-year-old self in 1960, a high school senior able to relive her teenage days and find out if she wants to repeat - or undo - her youthful mistakes. Notably, given Nadine's own marital status at the time of her regression, the title is a tad ironic - Peggy Sue is actually about to get divorced from her high school sweetheart (played by Lynch's Wild at Heart star Nicolas Cage, who is also the nephew of Peggy Sue's director, Francis Ford Coppola). Some critics sniped that Turner (who was barely thirty) looked too old to play the teenage part, so perhaps the writers were having fun by taking that notion to a further extreme (Wendy Robie was in her late thirties). There's also an element of self-mockery here as another Twin Peaks fan recently noted: many of the actors playing Twin Peaks'"actual" teenagers are long past their own high school years (as is often the case on film/TV high school dramas).

• I could only find one Nadine scene that was scripted but didn't make the final cut - in episode 4 she was going to bring Ed a big tray of breakfast food and explain her upcoming visit to a patent attorney: "Those drape runners are going to make us a fortune."

• Nadine pops up in deleted dialogue a few times as well. According to the episode 4 teleplay, Ed's assistant Sparky ("a wizened eager beaver") keeps lookout for Nadine while Ed calls Norma. Sparky is amazed by the condition of Nadine's exercise equipment. In the episode 11 script, Doc Hayward calls Ed to tell him that he "just talked with the Saeger-Swenson Clinic in Seattle. Nadine's problems might be related to something called pheochromo crytoma; effects the adrenal gland, it could account for her strength and, uh, erratic behavior." During James' visit to the diner in episode 12, Norma was supposed to talk to James about Nadine. When he tells Norma that Nadine ripped the door off a fridge, Norma asks, "Was she mad about something?" James answers, "No, she was happy." In the episode 17 script, Jacoby speaks up in the vice principal's office, insisting it's "a classic case of clinical regression. Mr. Greege, what's important here is that Nadine be allowed to maintain her own reality. Being eighteen is all she can manage. And it could be a lot worse. Be glad she's not napping in a crib." The vice principal insists she'll be treated like any other student and tells Ed to "forget hot dinners. Nadine'll be busy doing her homework."


SHOWTIME: Yes, Robie is on the cast list for 2017. I don't think her and Ed will be married - there's been plenty of time for them both to move on. Then again, circumstances may have forced them together once again. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly a few weeks ago, the actress casually dropped a bombshell that may or may not play out in the new series. (I don't think it will - I'm also not entirely clear if the anecdote refers to an emotional trigger for the actress or an actual plot point , although the way she describes it suggests the latter). "David's little secret whisper to me," Robie reveals about the original series, "I think we can tell after all these years, his little secret whisper that you [Everett McGill] weren't allowed to hear was, 'It's a baby.'"

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.

Ostensibly mad but immersed in hyperrationalism, Windom attacks Twin Peaks in ways both blunt and subtle, betting his life that he can harness its dark shadow.


Late 1960s
Recorded in black and white for (top-secret) posterity, FBI Agent Windom Earle - on loan to the Air Force for their Project Blue Book investigations into the paranormal - delivers a talk about dugpas, ancient sorcerers who would "cultivate evil for the sake of evil." His tone is solemn, but his manner is a bit feverish: "This ardent purity allows them to access a secret place where the cultivation of evil proceeds in exponential fashion and with it the furtherance of evil's resulting power. This place of power is tangible and as such it can be found, entered, and perhaps utilized in some fashion. The dugpas have many names for it but chief among them is the Black Lodge." Perceiving that his audience is skeptical, Windom grows irritated and dismissive.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Windom has recorded a message for FBI Agent Dale Cooper, a former protege whom he stabbed in Pittsburgh several years earlier after Cooper had an affair with his wife (whom Windom killed, though no one knows that). Recently escaped from a mental hospital, Windom has begun a game of chess with Cooper, via correspondence. This tape taunts the younger agent, calling him predictable and overly consistent in his strategy. Windom insists he will achieve his goal at any cost: "The king must die."

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Leo Johnson, a wounded, near-mute Twin Peaks resident, wanders through the woods until he stumbles upon a small cabin. Someone is playing the flute inside. The music stops when he enters and a shadowy figure reassures him and invites him to sit down, placing a gun gently next to a chessboard. "I am Windom," the man declares, moving into the light. "Windom Earle."

Monday, March 20, 1989
A longjohn-clad Windom awakens Leo with some more gentle flute music. The flute will not remain gentle for long - after reciting Leo's own criminal history back to him, Windom viciously attacks Leo with the wooden instrument, knocking him to the ground. Sitting on top of his helpless prisoner, Windom explains the history of the Shakuhachi flute, which samurai used to bludgeon their foes after their swords were banned. He also attaches a collar to Leo's neck, using a remote switch to zap him with a current of electricity when he won't obey. That evening, Windom disguises himself in a costume straight out of the Edwardian era. Leo is attempting to transcribe a poem and Windom electrocutes him again when his handwriting is too sloppy. He rewards Leo with a cookie when he improves. Windom heads into Twin Peaks, dropping off his wife Caroline's death mask in Cooper's room - even passing him on the way out of the elevator. Speaking in a thick European accent, Windom leaves an envelope for Audrey Horne, daughter of the hotel's owner. He takes an owl postcard from the display rack as a souvenir. Upstairs, Cooper hears Windom's voice in another recording, reminding him of his trauma in Pittsburgh.

Tuesday, March 21, 1989
Cooper finishes listening to the recording with the town's sheriff. Windom scolds him for taking his mind off chess: "print your move in tomorrow's paper or I will make it for you," he threatens (a few days ago, he took a pawn in the game and murdered a drifter as the real-life correspondent, so Cooper must know he means business). Dressed as a trucker, Windom casually leaves an envelope for waitress Shelly Johnson at the RR Diner. In the woods he advises Leo on the carving of a stick and attaches an arrowhead. Leo is growing docile and obedient as Windom manipulates him with a mixture of threats, compliments, and minor rewards. That night, Windom sits at the counter in the Road House and watches his handiwork - Shelly and Audrey meet with a third teenage girl (Donna Hayward) and realize they've each been given part of a poem torn in three. Windom smirks as he picks his teeth and slyly observes.

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
Windom marvels (somewhat unconvincingly) at the freshness of the countryside before expressing his dismay at Cooper's latest chess move (found in the daily paper). Windom deduces that his rival is attempting a stalemate, and further deduces that someone is helping Cooper. Furious and feeling cheated, Windom determines to change the rules. That afternoon, made up as kindly Dr. Gerald Craig, an old medical school classmate of Donna's father, Windom makes his first house call. Donna lets him in and listens cheerfully as he reminisces and compliments her. He offers a present - a small box with his contact information which he warns her not to open till her father is home (it is, in fact, a chess piece and the number is for a local cemetary...Gerald is long dead). Windom also visits the diner, this time disguised as a bearded biker. He encourages Shelly to join the Miss Peaks pageant despite her insecurity and then he sips his coffee as Cooper enters and sits at the counter with a book about Tibet. Windom is gone before Cooper looks in his direction.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
Windom spies on the sheriff's office via a device hidden in a Bonsai plant. His old boss Gordon Cole arrives and starts TALKING VERY LOUDLY, annoying Windom (especially when he shouts right into the plant). Windom chuckles when the agents leave the room - they're far off his trail (despite learning his connection to Project Blue Book and his use of the drug haloperidol to feign insanity). His interest in chess beginning to wane, Windom seeks queens in a new game: Leo selects three playing cards and discovers that Windom has pasted Audrey's, Donna's, and Shelly's photos onto the various queens. One face remains blank: the queen of hearts, whom Windom places on top of the Miss Twin Peaks poster (near a king with Cooper's face). Windom declares that the winner of the contest will die ("and Cooper gets to watch!"), laughing as he places a Joker card across the mysterious queen. With the goatee, pipe, and bow tie of an esteemed professor, Windom visits a library and introduces himself to Audrey as Edward Perkins. Discovering his supposed field of study, Audrey is eager to identify the poem she received the other night. He recites it from memory, but something about the way he attributes it, and pays Audrey a compliment, makes her uncomfortable. She quickly departs and Windom blows smoke rings in triumph. That night, he descends into Owl Cave armed only with a flashlight. Cooper and the men from the sheriff's department were there earlier, and Windom picks up where they left off, turning a rod one hundred eighty degrees so that its symbol matches the icon on the wall across from it. The entire cave begins trembling as the wall collapses. Windom gleefuly stands back to observe the revelation of a hidden petroglyph.

Friday, March 24, 1989
Smoking a pipe in his cabin, Windom tells the story of two locations: a dewy, sweet-natured White Lodge ("a ghastly place," he scoffs, "reeking of virtue's sour smell") and its opposite, the Black Lodge, whose horrific character Windom savors. This place is real, Windom confirms, and he intends to find it. One of his listeners, a young man decked out as a heavy metal enthusiast, enjoys the tale but wonders when he'll be getting the beer Windom promises. That afternoon, Windom supplies him with drinks while he stands inside a huge papier mache chess piece (a pawn, naturally). As Windom constructs the sculpture around his unwitting victim, the youth asks how he'll be getting out of it. "You won't," Windom calmly advises him, shocking Leo until he meekly carries an arrow to his master. Windom loads up his bow and congratulates the young man, who will be escaping "odium and obscurity" in order to answer the questions, "Where will my spirit awake? What life am I given after this life?" Until the final moments of his existence, the rocker doesn't quite realize that Windom has been preparing him for execution. That job finished, Windom dresses as a fisherman and watches, through binoculars, as Cooper embraces a pretty young woman.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
Fresh from some more aural espionage, Windom is more energized than ever. He casually casts aside the chessboard he's been ignoring, replacing it with a chart of the Owl Cave petroglyph. Later that day, he praises the dugpas to Leo, but his henchman is distracted. Spotting Shelly's photo again, he becomes agitated and as Windom mocks his concern - promising that Shelly will die if she wins Miss Twin Peaks - Leo attempts to turn the tables. But the poor fool doesn't realize that the controller in his hand still zaps him as long as the collar is around his own neck. Windom laughs at Leo's misery and tells him he'll learn the power of hate. That afternoon, Windom relegates Leo to horse's ass, donning a two-man horse costume and singing his way through the woods until he runs into Major Garland Briggs, an old Project Blue Book associate. Shooting the stunned officer with a dart, Windom takes him back to the cabin. There Windom interrogates the Major, who refuses to answer questions about his confidential work, even as Windom fires arrows within a inch of his head. Losing patience, Windom injects the Major with a truth serum and begins to get answers. Access to the Black Lodge is dependent on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. That night, as Leo and the Major shudder in agony, an elated Windom messes around on a computer, determining that the petroglyph is an invitation, indicating when the planets will appropriately align, but also a map. He overlays it upon a map of Twin Peaks and pinpoints the location he's looking for.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Windom returns from an excursion with a canvas bag and a dreadful-looking face. His skin is pale, his hair ajar, his black suit dirtier than ever, but he doesn't care. He isn't even particularly concerned that Leo released Major Briggs while he was gone; "I have a new game for you," he declares, holding the bag up in front of his face. When he removes it, his face is even more pale, his eyelids pink and raw, his teeth saturated in a black bilious gunk swallowing his gums. In the afternoon, Windom listens to the sheriff's office one last time and joyously embraces Cooper's epiphany. The key to open the Black Lodge is fear, "my favorite emotional state!" Windom bids Leo farewell but Leo can't return the salutation. He is too busy gripping a rope between his teeth, a rope tied to a basket full of tarantulas hovering over his head. Windom appears at the Road House for the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, dressed as a local character, Margaret "The Log Lady" Lanterman. Windom uses said log to bash the teenage Bobby Briggs across the head. Sneaking up to the catwalk, he watches Annie Blackburn (the woman Cooper took on a date) as she delivers her speech. When Annie is crowned Miss Twin Peaks, all hell breaks loose. The lights go off, a strobe begins, and explosions detonate. Windom grabs Annie and hustles her out of the Road House, stealing a truck and driving them into the woods. Losing the costume and proclaiming, "I do like the fear I'm feeling!" he drags Annie to Glastonbury Grove, a circle of twelve sycamore trees surrounding a small pool of an oily substance. Annie is resistant, declaring that Cooper will save her (Windom denies this, recalling Pittsburgh - "I took the boy right to the edge that time"). However, once Windom gets her inside the circle, she enters a trance and allows him to escort her inside the large red curtains that emerge amongst the trees. And so they enter the Black Lodge.

Cooper joins them, glimpsing a flash of Windom briefly as he hears Laura Palmer's scream. Terrified, he runs away. Cooper sees Windom again, appearing inches from his face and threatening Annie (who materializes and then disappears between them). "If you give me your soul," Windom offers, "I'll let Annie live." Cooper assents, and Windom stabs him in the gut...but the injury is reversed and Windom is seized by a far more powerful being. He yells in pain but the spirit shuts him up quickly, insisting that he has no right to ask for Cooper's soul and so his will be taken instead. A flame shoots out of Windom's head and he screams one last time before flopping his head down like an inert puppet. Cooper leaves through the curtains in front of Windom, and from behind Windom another Cooper emerges, cackling wickedly. The unimaginable power of the Black Lodge, which Windom hoped to use, has used him instead, toppling him as easily as a simple pawn.

Windom is the ultimate intruder. Like so many season two adversaries, he comes from outside the town but he feels as much anti-Twin Peaks the show as anti-Twin Peaks the town. In a way, that's appropriate. There are plenty of bad guys in season one and early season two, but no one antagonist for the hero to square off with. Even when Laura's killer is finally discovered, the situation is ambiguous and it's not immediately apparent who - or what - to assign blame to. Especially if Cooper is to become an active protagonist, not just a detective guiding us into a story but a subject of the story himself, he needs an enemy. And that enemy should stand for the opposite of Twin Peaks, the town that Cooper has grown to love, right? Windom is articulate where Twin Peaks is cryptic, flamboyant where it is withdrawn, aggressive where it is passive. The mood of the mountain town since the pilot has been defined by a languorous sensation, with a few exceptions. Notably, one of those exceptions is the breakneck season one finale, the only episode written and directed by Mark Frost. And Windom, as David Lynch said to his biographer Greg Olsen, "is all Mark Frost."

Frost invented Twin Peaks but he was also always attempting to push its boundaries. Rooted in the world of serial television (and later adapting his skills to the world of world-building novels), Frost is an artist who loves to keep moving, combining disparate ideas and bringing in references and touchstones you wouldn't necessarily expect to see together. This became particularly evident when Frost released The Secret History of Twin Peaks last year, a book as much about UFOs, Jack Parsons, and Richard Nixon as the goings-on of Nadine or the Log Lady. I expect much of this expansive quality will be in the new series, and that much of it will be attributable to Frost more than Lynch. Indeed, whenever Lynch returned to the show he brought back old characters that had been forgotten, echoed motifs from his previous episodes, and above all emphasized the centrality of the Laura Palmer mystery. Over the years, asked about what the series means to him, he circles back to the pilot. Lynch came from a world of filmmaking and painting, where an artist tends to focus on certain elements and build from there, coming back around to keep everything tied together and rooted in the original idea. The push/pull of Frost/Lynch is one of the key components of Twin Peaks. Does it work in Windom's case?

Initially, I would have said no across the board. And I still feel the character never quite clicks with the spirit of early Twin Peaks. Most pertinently, Twin Peaks is established as a show about the darkness within a small town. Even when exiled to the surrounding woods, Twin Peaks' shadow self feels eerily embedded in the melancholy environment of the town itself. So any outside threat would run contrary to this central idea. Furthermore, Windom is a classic supervillain - his rambling monologues and master-of-disguise shtick belong to the worlds of comic books or action movies (the late sixties Batman is a common reference point) more than the offbeat but naturalistic milieu established in the pilot - in which the strange emerges from the everyday. On the other hand, as already noted, Windom's anachronistic nature could be a virtue, positioning him as a threat to the world of Twin Peaks, drawing a contrast between the world of intuition that Cooper cherishes and the obsessive rationalism that Windom exhibits behind his "wild-and-crazy" persona. This sets him up well for his downfall in the finale and works nicely, if unintentionally, as a meta-commentary on the missteps of season two (as Martha Nochimson's essay "Desire Under the Douglas Firs" duly notes).

Unfortunately, in addition to his conception, there are problems with the execution of Windom Earle. His flamboyance and verbosity quickly neutralize the menacing mystery surrounding him and render him more cartoonish than threatening. There are issues with direction (Diane Keaton is often blamed for dressing him in longjohns and encouraging a Looney Tunes take), but more fundamentally with writing - Windom speaks like a screenwriters' wet dream, spewing purple prose that is entertaining on the page (especially when you're the one writing it) but can grow tiresome onscreen. Kenneth Welsh has a ball with the performance, and is often quite fun to watch, but depending on the director he can come off as more interested in playing than scaring. Some viewers, observing this discrepancy between careful build-up and disappointing follow-through, wonder if Windom would have been better left offscreen for the most part. (If I'm not mistaken, there may even be a fanedit eliminating all but his disguised appearances, building up the suspense and sense of uncertainty until he kidnaps Annie.)

Others, of course, love the character (many mark his appearance as the end of Twin Peaks' midseason doldrums) and take his change of pace in stride, seeing Windom as an escalation of Twin Peaks' narrative stakes and dramatic momentum in the midst of season two world-building. Regardless of one's opinion, Windom Earle is a crucial foundation stone of late season two - whatever flaws he holds are integral to the series itself at this point, and in some ways his character dominates the show's latter half as thoroughly as Laura Palmer dominated the first. He paves our path to the Black Lodge, provides the threat that colors Cooper's and Annie's entire relationship, and (ironically, given his own distance from the town) provides the narrative backdrop - maybe the necessary contrast - for Twin Peaks' re-emerging sense of self as the show builds toward a conclusion.

Windom is a long time coming. Viewers settling in for their first rewatch are often startled to discover how early his name is first mentioned: episode 9, the second episode of season two, in the thick of the Laura mystery - and in a Lynch-directed entry at that! Hints are scattered like breadcrumbs in the midst of another narrative, but there's a gap between the resolution of Cooper's investigation and Windom's first appearance (nearly four episodes). A chess game begins, and Windom does eventually kills his first victim but for a long time we are distracted by Cooper's suspension from the FBI and a variety of rather unappealing subplots, mostly ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Whether intentional or the result of an unanticipated snafu (the abrupt cancellation of a Cooper/Audrey romantic arc), we tread water while awaiting Windom's arrival. Anticipation builds until he is finally revealed, in an effectively gothic moment that feels like something out of Frankenstein.

That tension quickly dissipates, with many viewers blaming the Diane Keaton episode for the character's downfall. However, there's also little momentum in the storytelling. Initially, Windom's purpose is to spook Cooper by sending threatening messages, reminding him of Caroline, and committing murders every time a pawn is taken. But the messages grow repetitive, the Caroline-related events have already happened, and the real-life pawns are strangers. Even when Windom threatens townspeople (and it takes him a few episodes to reach that point), the encounters don't really escalate. The chess motif is also dull; Harley Peyton personally apologized to chess enthusiasts after the season, while shifting some of the blame - the game was Mark Frost's idea but he quickly lost interest and left its execution to the other writers, who knew nothing about chess and weren't interested to begin with. So aside from some latent menace in the Shelly/Donna/Audrey encounters, the character isn't going anywhere.

The Miss Twin Peaks pageant begins to provide a destination, but one whose significance remains on the horizon. The brilliant stroke finally arrives when Windom is linked to the Black Lodge. From this point forward, his character races with Cooper toward an exciting, uncertain destination, and a sense of mystery and anticipation is restored to the show. It helps too that several successive directors get a firm grip on the character (and Welsh finds a particular groove), making him far more iconic and unnerving. Windom begins dressing in black when he's not in costume, and the forced joviality of his manic nature gives way to a harsher, nastier edge in his delivery. By the final three episodes, he has become a much more effective villain. Nonetheless, the script for the final episode - finally landing Windom inside the long-awaited Lodge - squanders much of the preceding build-up. Windom's worst traits are indulged - long monologues, a cartoonish delivery, a monopoly on Twin Peaks' dark currents (allowing the show's back half to almost entirely obscure any memory of its earliest roots, aside from an appearance by Bob and a glimpse of the Red Room).

The character both suffered and, ultimately, gained from David Lynch's numerous revisions. On the one hand, his screentime is drastically cut from the page. Omnipresent in the teleplay's Lodge, Windom is now absent (except for a few flash-frames) until the very end of the sequence. He has virtually no lines in the Lodge, and most of his playful, baroque dialogue in Glastonbury Grove is axed too. However, it's fascinating to see how Lynch handles this very un-Lynchian character. Welsh delivers a truly creepy, deranged performance as he leads Annie through the woods and his final moments in the Lodge simultaneously sends up the character and fulfills his potential. (It should be noted that Windom's fate was in the original script, but set in a dentist's office!!) Onscreen, Windom gets the ending he deserves - and I mean that in both the generous and ungenerous sense.

Welsh has frequently portrayed political-historical figures (including Harry Truman twice), a tendency which follows him even into fictional roles: in the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, the director cast him because he resembled Dick Cheney. Welsh's roots are in Canadian theater, but he has acted frequently in films and television up to the present day, with two hundred nineteen credits to his name, including Crocodile Dundee II, The Freshman, and Four Brothers. He also appeared alongside Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer) and Moira Kelly (the film version of Donna Hayward) in the true-crime TV movie Love, Lies, and Murder, shot around the same time as Twin Peaks and containing a few interesting links to the series. He was cast in Twin Peaks thanks to his friendship with Robert Engels, one of the writers, and relished the opportunity. He especially enjoyed working with Lynch (and learning to talk backwards) on the last episode, comparing it to the series finale of The Prisoner. (film pictured: Four Brothers, 2005)


The three major writers of Twin Peaks all played an important role in Windom Earle's development. Mark Frost conceived the character as a Moriarty-like opponent to Cooper's Sherlock Holmes. Harley Peyton, who wrote or co-wrote the most Windom episodes (half of his total) named the character after actor William Windom (a TV stalwart for several decades) and the High Sierra gangster Mad Dog Earle, played by Humphrey Bogart. Robert Engels, a friend of Kenneth Welsh, recruited the actor and worked closely with him to craft the character (in addition to co-authoring four episodes himself). Windom is also written by Barry Pullman (in three episodes, almost all of the writer's output), Tricia Brock and Scott Frost. Only two writers never write a Windom episode: the flaky one-timer Jerry Stahl...and David Lynch. In fact, this is the last character in these studies whom Lynch never receives a credit for. It's worth noting, however, that Lynch did (uncredited) refashion much of Windom's dialogue in the finale, replacing some passages as well as paring down the words (Welsh laughs about how Lynch essentially scrapped a page of dialogue and told him to just stick a flashlight under his chin and say, "I am Windom Earle!"). Windom is directed by Duwayne Dunham, Uli Edel, James Foley, Lesli Linka Glatter, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Tim Hunter, Diane Keaton, Lynch, and Jonathan Sanger. A different director handles each episode we see him in (although Dunham also directed his first "appearance" on the show, a purely vocal performance).

Windom is onscreen for roughly forty-seven minutes. He is in thirty-one scenes in ten episodes, taking place over a week and a half (plus some footage from twenty years earlier). He's featured the most in episode 27, when he kidnaps Major Briggs. His primary location is his cabin. He shares the most screentime with Leo. He is one of the top ten characters in episodes 22, 25, 26, and 29, and one of the top five characters in episode 24. He is second only to Cooper in episode 27. Appearing six times in the top ten, he holds the record for any character so far. Windom is one of the top twenty characters in season two.




Episode 9: Windom is introduced to the series by Albert, in a conversation with Cooper over breakfast at the Great Northern Hotel. Cooper is immediately uncomfortable when his name comes up. Albert explains that Windom escaped from "the local laughing academy" - "your former partner flew the coop, Coop." There is then a long traveling shot toward Jonathan watching the FBI agents from across the room (leading some to conclude that he must be Windom Earle).

Episode 13: As Laura's mystery is building to its climax, Gordon Cole shows up at the sheriff's station with an envelope from Windom Earle. It contains a chess move, beginning the game that won't really pick up its pace for another five episodes (over a week on the series). For now, it's a quick moment embedded in an episode focused on the Palmer investigation, Audrey's return from One Eyed Jack's, and Josie's impending departure from Twin Peaks (even the question of who shot Cooper is given more screentime).

Episode 16: Likewise, there is one seed-planting moment (though it doesn't mention Windom specifically) in the tremendous climax of the Laura story. Leland Palmer, possessed by BOB, is raving about his love of knives when he whirls around in his chair and practically spits at the FBI agent who captured him: "Just like what happened to you in Pittsburgh that time, huh Cooper?" Cooper is startled. Although the show has obliquely referred to the Caroline backstory twice before, this is the first reference directly linked to Cooper (since Windom is the one who stabbed him).

Episode 17: Cooper tells Audrey that his former partner, Windom Earle, taught him how to be a special agent. Together, they guarded a federal witness but she was killed and Cooper blames himself ("I wasn't ready, because I loved her"). "I was badly injured," he explains, "and my partner lost his mind." He withholds the information about Caroline's relationship to Windom - and his suspicion that Windom killed her - for now.

Episode 19: Cooper informs Diane that Windom responded to his first move before he even sent it: perfect anticipation.

Episode 20: Lucy Moran, the sheriff's receptionist, searches newspapers for Windom's next move but can't find anything. At the end of the episode, that move is revealed in human form: Windom has killed a drifter and posed his body inside the sheriff's station (during a power outage that he himself orchestrated).

Episode 21: Cooper describes how Windom must have located and murdered this victim. He describes his nemesis as a genius and observes, "He's taken his first pawn in a very sick game." Cooper also tells Truman that he and Windom played a game every day for three years, and Cooper never won. He also explains his backstory again, but this time he reveals that the woman he was having an affair with was Windom's wife, and that Windom not only was their assailant but probably committed the crime she witnessed in the first place. "Windom Earle's mind is like a diamond," Cooper warns.

Episode 22: Albert arrives in Twin Peaks bearing news of Windom. He shows an old photo of the agent, and reports that Windom has been mailing items from Caroline's wedding outfit to various points around the country, creating a "C" on a map. Also, the dead vagrant shared Caroline's maiden name. Cooper enlists local chess expert Pete Martell to help him engineer a stalemate game, killing as few pawns as possible. That night, Cooper is looking at a picture of Caroline in his wallet when Windom passes him in the Great Northern (having just placed her death mask upstairs).

Episode 23: Cooper and Truman discuss Windom over Caroline's death mask, Windom's tape, and a chess board. Audrey receives Windom's note in the morning as she begins her duties as a concierge.

Episode 24: Windom comes up several times in conversations between the lawmen (Truman is recovering from Josie's death). Pete advises Cooper that a casualty-free stalemate seems impossible but Cooper expects Windom to grow impatient and make a move for the queen, so protecting the big pieces should be a priority.

Episode 26: The lawmen return to Owl Cave and discover the petroglyph and Windom's footprints. Shelly recites Shelley when Cooper is in earshot and he recognizes it as a poem he shared with Caroline. He gets the fragments from her and Donna, identifies Leo's handwriting, and realizes that the search for Leo Johnson, the pursuit of Windom Earle, and the discovery in Owl Cave are all related. That night the body of Rusty Tomaski is discovered at Twin Peaks' gazebo, inside a giant black pawn (itself inside a wooden crate that Cooper must open by shooting at a rock attached to a rope), placed on the town's gazebo. A note is pinned to the front: "Next time it will be someone you know."

Episode 27: The body is removed by men is hazmat suits while Rusty's roadie pal recalls how Windom came out of the woods and invited them to his cabin for beer. The conference room at the sheriff's station is piled high with files on Project Blue Book and Windom. Major Briggs recalls, "Windom Earle was the best and the brightest among us. But when our attention turned from outer space to the wooded areas surrounding Twin Peaks, he became destructively obsessive" resulting in his removal. After watching the tape of Windom from the sixties, Cooper declares that the chess campaign was a ruse - the ex-agent's real goal in Twin Peaks is to reach the Black Lodge, which has something to do with the Owl Cave petroglyph.

Episode 28: Cooper fears that Windom has kidnapped the Major; when the hostage escapes and returns to the station, Cooper and Truman question him. They realize that the "queen" Windom is looking for will be the victor of Miss Twin Peaks. They await her crowning at the Road House so they can put her under protective custody.

Episode 29: Pete Martell reports that the Log Lady stole his truck and Cooper corrects him; Windom Earle was the thief. Truman and Cooper decode the petroglyph/map and head to Glastonbury Grove to catch up with Windom and Annie. Truman watches Cooper enter the red curtains in pursuit.


• Windom is naturally featured throughout the second half of Scott Frost's novel The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (by contrast, he is virtually non-existent in Mark Frost's more recent The Secret History of Twin Peaks). The book was written and published during season two, and helps set up the events of the finale. Windom recruits Cooper to the FBI at a job fair booth in 1975. After their very first meeting, Cooper states, "I now believe I may have been looking to understand evil intellectually as a substitute for confronting it head-on." They meet again when Cooper is at the Academy, and Windom accompanies Cooper when he kills his first person, a bank robber. Cooper begins playing chess, and meets Caroline. "During a private moment together," he reports, "she told me about the first time Windom was forced to use his weapon, and that she hoped I would not let it affect my life the way it did Windom's. I wonder what she meant." Later Windom disappears (there are implications he's gone to the Lodge), and during the time he's gone several low-level criminals are murdered and mutilated. In late 1978 Caroline is kidnapped, according to Windom taken by armed intruders who interrupted them during dinner, and Cooper and Windom search for her for several months without luck. She finally turns up in New York addicted to heroin and working as a prostitute. When she recovers, she can't remember the face of the man who tormented her, but she is uncomfortable around Windom. He leaves her with Cooper on the pretense that he will be able to help her better at this point. Cooper and Caroline fall in love and, soon after, on May 1, 1979, Caroline is murdered. Windom winds up in the psych word, only able to laugh and say "Your move" to Cooper. Cooper blames himself. A year later, however, he has drawn a different conclusion:

"Windom Earle was insane long before the events of that terrible night, and is guilty of the attack on me, and the murder of his wife. I cannot prove this, for he is far too brilliant an opponent, but I am sure of it in my heart. How and why Windom crossed this line I do not know. His own abduction I now believe was one of the spirit as opposed to a physical kidnapping. Windom was taken over by evil. The Windom I knew before that moment no longer existed. He was playing with us after that. Every event that took place beyond that moment was of his doing. He kidnapped Caroline. He gave her the drug that took her to the edge of insanity. He allowed Caroline and me to fall in love so that he would have the pleasure of destroying it. I must do all that I can to make sure that Windom never again sets foot outside of that hospital."

• Tim Hunter directed the scene in which Windom's face turns pale and ghoulish. It's one of the character's best moments and its genesis and outcome are both fascinating. The image is the offshoot of a technical, practical problem. According to Hunter's interview in Brad Dukes' Reflections: "Everything was predicated on Frank Byers' unwillingness to do more than sixteen setups per day. ... So I had to reduce the scope of the coverage considerably. I watched Ozu's Tokyo Story and some other minimalist films and told myself I was directing a Japanee-style Falcon Crest. That's why I blacked the bad guy's teeth out in the opening - an homage to the Ozu-Mizoguchi pictures I watched..." Specifically, Windom's look recalls the ghost in Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu. Considering that Windom is probably coming from the Lodge, or somewhere nearby, there is a supernatural connotation to this image, one that Hunter probably drew from the woman's ethereal status in that film. Blackened teeth, however, was actually a recurring social custom in Japan, particularly among aristocratic wives (such as the ghost in Ugetsu). Called "ohaguro," it was banned by the Japanese government in the late nineteenth century. Lynch paints Laura's and Leland's faces in a similar fashion in Fire Walk With Me (in moments when they are close to the spirit world), probably inspired by Hunter's technique. Coincidentally (maybe) this also echoes a look Lynch employed in his experimental films The Alphabet and The Grandmother two decades earlier.

• Cooper is shown sending his first chess move to Windom in the episode 17 script. I couldn't find a single deleted scene actually featuring the character until episode 28, when Andy was supposed to have a run-in with "the Log Lady" at the Road House as "she" plants a bomb backstage. The end of that episode is also a little different on the page - Cooper sees the disguised Windom on the catwalk above just as the pageant ends. He climbs up and confronts his enemy face-to-face for the first time. Windom tells him, "Dear heart. You are, if nothing else, consistent. As you have no doubt realized, our little game of four- dimensional chess has concluded. And once, dear, dim, Dale - you have left your Queen unprotected. Forgive me. I amuse myself. You see, twenty years ago I made a promise. And tonight, I keep it ... in the Black Lodge." Then the lights go out.

• Windom's material remains intact from script to screen to an unusual degree. That changes, of course, in the finale. Oh boy, does it change. The episode 29 script was slashed to ribbons, but few cuts are as severe as those Lynch applied to Windom's dialogue. I couldn't hope to duplicate all the revisions here, so I encourage you to read the shooting script yourself. To summarize, Windom talks a lot. Dragging Annie through the woods, the quips never stop flowing: "Oh, man, what a cheater! Sister Mary Holy Water crams for finals.""On the other hand, I've just spent two weeks in a cabin with a smelly head of cabbage.""I tell ya, doll, if I was ten years younger and could find the heater in this truck - boy oh boy. Having some fun now." Cooper and Truman arrive right as Windom and Annie are passing into the Black Lodge; Cooper even grabs Windom's leg and is dragged inside. ("I always felt we were sort of Lodge Brothers," Windom jokes.) Inside the Lodge, Windom is everywhere, guiding Cooper through this dimension like a madcap docent. "Think of us as astronauts," he proclaims, zipping around the Lodge. "And when you do, think of us fondly. I could hazard a guess at the physics, but why spoil the fun?" Scolding Cooper, Windom begins shouting, "You were such a dullard, Coopy, such an earnest, plodding, do-gooding Eagle Scout - it was all I could do sometimes to keep myself from SHREDDING YOUR INTERNAL ORGANS OUT OF GENERAL PRINCIPLE!" As big band music swells on the soundtrack, Windom appears in a top hat and tails and begins crooning "Anything Goes." Cooper sees a vision of Windom reporting Caroline's death and his own injury to police. Then, as in the actual episode, Windom asks for Cooper's soul in exchange for Annie. He does so inside of a dentist's office. "Here's the deal, Dale," he proclaims, as if talking to Leo. "Throne room. Windom. Windom sits on throne. Windom king. Windom happy. Problem: Windom need to make deposit first. That's how it works. Windom can't make deposit all by himself. Windom un-happy." Singing "Back in the Saddle Again," Windom sits in the dentist's chair, preparing for the operation in which Cooper's soul will be transferred to him. But he is trapped in the chair by BOB, who appears in a dentist's uniform with a large syringe to remove souls.

I swear I'm not making any of this up!

When asked about the final episode in an interview with Chris Rodley several years later, Lynch commented, "When it came to the Red Room, it was, in my opinion, completely and totally wrong. Completely and totally wrong. And so I changed that part."

• A recent Diane... podcast episode helped to frame Cooper and Windom in a new light for me:

"It's interesting to consider how Cooper relates to Lynch's other splitting characters. Obviously there's Laura, who like Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet seems to have something approaching two modes: one for day, one for night. But I'm thinking more specifically of Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn from Mulholland Drive and Fred Madison/Pete Dayton from Lost Highway. After all, Lynch has categorically stated that Cooper isn't possessed by BOB, but rather BOB is with him. The dark Cooper is still Cooper, just a Cooper re-focused. In Mark's words, from earlier in the podcast, constructed from his failings and his fears. The issue for Pete and Betty, what forces Betty to confront her reality, and what spurs Fred to flee from his, into a ... story with no beginning, middle or end, isn't so much a plot point but rather their relationship to a constant, unchanging truth. A bit like the Red Room. In both cases, the acts of murdering a loved one. That's why these characters, and perhaps Cooper, is best thought of as trapped in his own pain and the only way out is to re-focus. Betty spent the entire film looking away from what is right in front of her, her darkest truth until unlike Pete in Lost Highway, she did, and her world collapsed. Maybe something not too dissimilar will happen to Cooper, but with positive results. Arguably, and we'll get into this when we talk about Fire Walk With Me, that's precisely how things play out for Laura."

Obviously, this passage is about Cooper, not Windom. But if Betty and Pete provide cover for Diane and Fred, perhaps "the good Dale" exists as a similar cover for Cooper? If so, Windom emerges as Cooper's first doppelganger (the "bad Dale" in the Lodge emerges at the exact moment Windom is silenced). He is an externalization of Cooper's own hidden darkness, specifically related to the destruction of Caroline, which echoes the destruction of Camilla and Alice. Clearly, the Twin Peaks narrative with its relatively straightforward division between the human and spirit worlds doesn't embrace the sort of psychodramatic ambiguity found in Lynch's later films (though it begins to hint at it, especially with Leland/Bob and Laura's duality - by Fire Walk With Me Lynch's "second stage" has arguably begun). And as a Frost/Peyton/Engels creation, Windom was not intended to fulfill some Lynchian vision of projection, responsibility, and confrontation (perhaps on a more abstract, symbolic level but not within the narrative reality itself). And yet. We know that Lynch and Frost are probably going to be reinventing their tale when Twin Peaks "returns" in a month. That dreams and slippages between different realities may well play a part, in the spirit of Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. With that in mind, it's intriguing to consider Windom (and to a large degree, the Twin Peaks we see through his eyes) as an invention of Cooper's own psyche, a protective device shielding him from the brutal truth that - for whatever reason - Caroline was his wife and he's the one who killed her. This doesn't quite mean "it's in his own head" (such readings of Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway may be reductive), because the distinction between inner and outer life collapses in Lynch's work. However, it does mean that Windom - frustrating dramatic flaws and all, maybe especially due to those flaws - represents a crucial shadow side that Twin Peaks can't simply dispense with, anymore than Cooper can dispense with his own.


SHOWTIME: No, Welsh is not on the cast list for 2017. His character has seemingly been dispatched (although what happens in the Lodge doesn't necessarily stay in the Lodge). Plus, he's very indicative of a late season two Twin Peaks spirit that isn't necessarily what the creators are going for this time. Nonetheless, fans have hoped and speculated that Welsh may make an unannounced cameo. Engels has said there was talk of including him somehow in Fire Walk With Me (along with other denizens trapped in the Black Lodge like Josie) and the character certainly has major relevance to Cooper's backstory (and thus to the very situation that - presumably - provides the premise for the new series). However, Windom's role as Cooper's chief antagonist may very well have been superseded...by Cooper himself. Where there once were two, there is now one. Or maybe there was always one?