Hello Johnny, how are you today?

Twin Peaks

3.10: Laura is the one.

(SPOILERS) I’ve a theory that all it takes to tip a solid episode of Twin Peaks (in any season) into a great one are three or four slices of sublime strangeness. The rest can hum along amiably, in contrast to that electricity the Log Lady has something to say about, but it’s those scenes that define the overall shape and energy. Laura is the one has a good three or four, and maybe the funniest sustained Lynchian visual gag so far.

That comes in the form of the Mitchum brothers, or to be more precise Robert Knepper’s Rodney. He’s aided and abetted by Candie (Amy Shiels), part airhead, part fruit bat, attempting to swat a fly while Rodney examines casino surveillance logs. And like most of the director’s comic gold, this goes on and on and on, and you absolutely know it will end with Rodney getting clobbered. I wasn’t expecting it to be with the TV remote, though.

I’m not certain Candie’s mental state, sustained though it is, is going to be about anything other than her being in Lynch world, but the Mitchum boys gradually getting more and more frustrated with her while trying not lose it (“If you fire her, she’s got no place to go” asserts Bradley of one of his trio of, ahem, employees, as she spends five minutes on the casino floor talking about nothing to Anthony Sinclair instead of bringing him to see them).

Bradley Mitchum: That’s our Mr Jackpot, Rodney. Turns out our Mr Jones is actually Mr Jones.

I like that we’re getting to see their thick-as-thieves thinking too; “Brad, remind me to call off that hit on Ike” suggests Rodney as they watch news of the Spike’s apprehension. On first sight, this duo were simply intimidating, but now, with the Candie-inspired weirdness percolating their milieu, I want more of their surprisingly warped world. Their place in the scheme of things, meanwhile, is taking perfectly logical shape, as they’re (seemingly – Bradley does comment of Anthony “I could throw a car farther than I trust that rat fuck”) duped into believing Dougie ensured they didn’t get a $30m insurance pay out and has a vendetta against them, when really it’s Anthony in cahoots with rival casino guy Warrick (in turn in with Evil Coop).

Other weirdness, of a decidedly more psychotic kind, revolves around the Horne family. Richard, now established as most definitely Audrey’s daughter, is on a vituperative roll, bashing poor Miriam’s head in during an off camera one-shot on her trailer (last we saw, she was still breathing, though), and breaking into granny’s house and stealing her money.

It’s another of those queasily hilarious scenes, because of what’s going on at the edges. Johnny, tied to a chair with oven gloves on his hands and sporting a hard hat, so he can’t hurt himself any more, while a headless teddy on the table repeatedly queries “Hello Johnny, how are you today?” It’s a mesmerising scene. That said, at about the point where Richard’s screaming “Cunt!” at his gran, I was admittedly given pause to wonder if the restrictions of mainstream TV don’t promote a creativity all their own, and Lynch’s licence to do anything may not always be the best of all possible worlds. Which may just be the Mary Whitehouse in me.

Completing the Horne-swoggling this episode, we discover Ben is no longer with Sylvia and one good phone call (or bad phone call) persuades him an affair with Beverly may actually be a good idea. And Jerry’s still in the woods, still bereft of a phone signal.

Richard is definitely stacking up a whole world of pain for himself, as is snot-nosed spousal abuser Steven Burnett, but the character closest to being meted any kind of justice is nominally on the other side of the law. We knew Chad was a bad ’un, and now we know he’s an even worse ‘un, in cahoots with Richard Horne and believing he can hoodwink Lucy on the basis that she’s a bubble brain. So it’s pleasing to see she has duly noted Chad lifting Miriam’s grassing letter (the postie’s no slouch, either).

Nor can you can’t pull the wool over Albert and Gordon Cole’s eyes, since they have Diane’s number even if they don’t know who has hers (as for a photo of Evil Coop at the scene of the penthouse murders just happening to show up now – I still think it’s a bit too neat if he’s calling the shots there too, as I was hoping for some other individual or element to be involved). And isn’t it lovely to see romance blossoming between Albert and Constance?

Janey-E: Dougie, do you find me attractive?

Which is also the case, in a significantly more one-sided sense, with Janey-E and Dougie-Coop. Carnality abounds at any rate, with Janey-E turning Coop into the rumpo kid. It’s another funny scene as, having marvelled over her husband’s newly taut body, and been completely ignored in favour of chocolate cake, she rides Coop, his arms flailing like a puppet on a string and looking duly cheery afterwards. Can you see Coop suddenly getting his marbles back at this point? Me neither. As for Janey-E becoming smitten with a mentally-challenged, non-responsive husband. Well, maybe she’s starting on the crazy pills. Or just very, very shallow.

Dr Jacobi: They’re too busy fucking! Fucking us at the grocery store! Fucking us at the bank! At the gas pump!

Other vignettes: another marvellously splenetic rant from Jacobi, this time about big pharma (as Nadine looks on from the premises of cutely-named Run Silent, Run Drapes), Harry Dean Stanton playing the guitar, Gordon’s vision of a giant Laura at the door, reminding me of nothing so much as The Goodies’ Kitten Kong (and his drawing of a, well, a reindeer anteater – a reineater? – being attacked by an elastic arm), and one of the Log Lady’s ever-cryptic calls to Hawk, warning of the glow that is dying and how the Truman brothers are among the good ones, and how he should “Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. Hawk, Laura is the one”. I was struck that Gordon is effectively filling in for the kind of experience absent-in-mind Coop ought to be having; is this the first example of the season improvising to cover for that state of affairs?

And Moby, at the Bang Bang Club, supporting Rebekah Del Rio in a song that sounds like it would have fitted right in 25 years ago, appropriate as the Mobe-ster lifted the Laura Palmer’s Theme for his first big hit (Go). Of the two pop artists getting billing in fantasy shows this week (the other being Ed Sheerhan dressed as a soldier), this is by far the more elegant and unassuming one. From the man who used to play nob-touch, no less.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Oh, you got me right in the pantaloons, partner.

The Party (1968) (SPOILERS) Blake Edwards’ semi-improvisational reunion with Peter Sellers is now probably best known for – I was going to use an elephant-in-the-room gag, but at least one person already went there – Sellers’ “brown face”. And it isn’t a decision one can really defend, even by citing The Party ’s influence on Bollywood. Satyajit Ray had also reportedly been considering working with Sellers… and then he saw the film. One can only assume he’d missed similar performances in The Millionairess and The Road to Hong Kong ; in the latter case, entirely understandable, if not advisable. Nevertheless, for all the flagrant stereotyping, Sellers’ bungling Hrundi V Bakshi is a very likeable character, and indeed, it’s the piece’s good-natured, soft centre – his fledgling romance with Claudine Longet’s Michele – that sees The Party through in spite of its patchy, hit-and-miss quality.

I never strangled a chicken in my life!

Rope (1948) (SPOILERS) Rope doesn’t initially appear to have been one of the most venerated of Hitchcocks, but it has gone through something of a rehabilitation over the years, certainly since it came back into circulation during the 80s. I’ve always rated it highly; yes, the seams of it being, essentially, a formal experiment on the director’s part, are evident, but it’s also an expert piece of writing that uses our immediate knowledge of the crime to create tension throughout; what we/the killers know is juxtaposed with the polite dinner party they’ve thrown in order to wallow in their superiority.

They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

Time Bandits (1981) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam had co-directed previously, and his solo debut had visual flourish on its side, but it was with Time Bandits that Gilliam the auteur was born. The first part of his Trilogy of Imagination, it remains a dazzling work – as well as being one of his most successful – rich in theme and overflowing with ideas while resolutely aimed at a wide (family, if you like) audience. Indeed, most impressive about Time Bandits is that there’s no evidence of self-censoring here, of attempting to make it fit a certain formula, format or palatable template.

I'm an old ruin, but she certainly brings my pulse up a beat or two.

The Paradine Case (1947) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock wasn’t very positive about The Paradine Case , his second collaboration with Gregory Peck, but I think he’s a little harsh on a picture that, if it doesn’t quite come together dramatically, nevertheless maintains interest on the basis of its skewed take on the courtroom drama. Peck’s defence counsel falls for his client, Alida Valli’s accused (of murder), while wife Ann Todd wilts dependably and masochistically on the side-lines.

You must have hopes, wishes, dreams.

Brazil (1985) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam didn’t consider Brazil the embodiment of a totalitarian nightmare it is often labelled as. His 1984½ (one of the film’s Fellini-riffing working titles) was “ the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984 ”, in contrast to Michael Anderson’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1948. This despite Gilliam famously boasting never to have read the Orwell’s novel: “ The thing that intrigues me about certain books is that you know them even though you’ve never read them. I guess the images are archetypal ”. Or as Pauline Kael observed, Brazil is to Nineteen Eighty-Four as “ if you’d just heard about it over the years and it had seeped into your visual imagination ”. Gilliam’s suffocating system isn’t unflinchingly cruel and malevolently intolerant of individuality; it is, in his vision of a nightmare “future”, one of evils spawned by the mechanisms of an out-of-control behemoth: a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. And yet, that is not really, despite how indulgently and glee

Miss Livingstone, I presume.

Stage Fright (1950) (SPOILERS) This one has traditionally taken a bit of a bruising, for committing a cardinal crime – lying to the audience. More specifically, lying via a flashback, through which it is implicitly assumed the truth is always relayed. As Richard Schickel commented, though, the egregiousness of the action depends largely on whether you see it as a flaw or a brilliant act of daring: an innovation. I don’t think it’s quite that – not in Stage Fright ’s case anyway; the plot is too ordinary – but I do think it’s a picture that rewards revisiting knowing the twist, since there’s much else to enjoy it for besides.

A herbal enema should fix you up.

Never Say Never Again (1983) (SPOILERS) There are plenty of sub-par Bond s in the official (Eon) franchise, several of them even weaker than this opportunistic remake of Thunderball , but they do still feel like Bond movies. Never Say Never Again , despite – or possibly because he’s part of it – featuring the much-vaunted, title-referencing return of the Sean Connery to the lead role, only ever feels like a cheap imitation. And yet, reputedly, it cost more than the same year’s Rog outing Octopussy .

Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you ripped the fronts off houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (SPOILERS) I’m not sure you could really classify Shadow of a Doubt as underrated, as some have. Not when it’s widely reported as Hitchcock’s favourite of his films. Underseen might be a more apt sobriquet, since it rarely trips off the lips in the manner of his best-known pictures. Regardless of the best way to categorise it, it’s very easy to see why the director should have been so quick to recognise Shadow of a Doubt 's qualities, even if some of those qualities are somewhat atypical.

I don’t like fighting at all. I try not to do too much of it.

Cuba (1979) (SPOILERS) Cuba -based movies don’t have a great track record at the box office, unless Bad Boys II counts. I guess The Godfather Part II does qualify. Steven Soderbergh , who could later speak to box office bombs revolving around Castro’s revolution, called Richard Lester’s Cuba fascinating but flawed. Which is generous of him.

I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) (SPOILERS) Kubrick’s masterpiece satire of mutually-assured destruction. Or is it? Not the masterpiece bit, because that’s a given. Rather, is all it’s really about the threat of nuclear holocaust? While that’s obviously quite sufficient, all the director’s films are suggested to have, in popular alt-readings, something else going on under the hood, be it exposing the ways of Elite paedophilia ( Lolita , Eyes Wide Shut ), MKUltra programming ( A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket ), transhumanism and the threat of imminent AI overlords ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ), and most of the aforementioned and more besides (the all-purpose smorgasbord that is The Shining ). Even Barry Lyndon has been posited to exist in a post-reset-history world. Could Kubrick be talking about something else as well in Dr. Strangelove ?

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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