0:00Hello everyone and welcome back to horror vanguards twin peaks retro perspective. I am ash one of the co-ghosts and we are joined by scout john aka the liquor guys cat. How's it going you two? Yeah good. We are doing pretty well with them pretty well. Scout is a big fan of season two of twin peaks. Yeah, we are we are now a this is like a a guys on a couch personality driven podcast but you and I are slowly leaving the show and being replaced by our cats. Yeah, exactly. And you know, fortunately the cats are going to do less like terrible financial and dating advice. So I honestly think that's how we that's how we save that genre of podcasting. I keep saying podcasting is so due for the kind of late VHS grift make a podcast for your cats that's just cats talking. Call it cat talk cat talk there you go. That's that would go so viral on TikTok cats. I know that you're listening. Call us. We are happy to talk more about this idea. Just give give your cat your phone. They know what to do. We are talking about of course episode 12 or 5 or 70. I don't I don't know anymore. I don't know what number we're on but we are talking about the orchids curse.
1:54This this is going to get exciting. This is a this is a spicy high octane episode. We have a shootout. We we have the words gets a freniode being mentioned essentially every third line. We have like five separate ability discourses happening this episode is we are cursed. We are we are the orchids cursed now that we have watched this. Yeah the pace the pace and the kind of the amount of stuff that's just being thrown into these episodes is definitely ramping up I feel. I have a ridiculous hot take about the amount of stuff that's happening and this is like this is bordering on Tommy with so levels of things just keep happening. Yeah stuff just keeps going on for some reason and we're not not really sure why which which only furthers my Tommy with so is an American realist filmmaker that's that's that's a take we'll get to eventually. I think I think so. I think so.
2:50Um we just spend the rest of the Twin Peaks retrospect talking about the room. Where would you where would you like to begin? I think we should begin with Cooper's fondness for yoga. Yes. Okay. What do you what do you have to say about this because it's kind of fascinating like not only his but the show as a text fascination with iconography and subjects from the east I find to be very interesting. So there's a there's a real fondness for like things like transcendental meditation and a lot of David Lynch's work and there's a real interest in this notion of like yogic discipline.
3:30Yeah. I like that he's I think but again even in the midst of all that when people go oh the show so weird it's really goofy because it opens with Cooper talking about a weird dream he had. Yes and he was doing a calm it's like it's a comedy bit where he goes a dreamtower is eating a large tasteless gum drop and then he awoke and he's been chewing on one of his earplugs. And this is this is maybe my favorite thing about spending a lot of time between peaks is that like this reputation of Lynch is like this and I know in season two he was far to a degree much less involved but this reputation of like the lynchian is like the dark and the strange and the sexually transgressive.
4:18David Lynch is just a goofy little guy right. It's just and it's just having fun. Oh yeah I was just going to say this is what makes David Lynch so at home with other figures in my mind that are similar like John Waters or divine or just like like any of that like these are just like absolute weirdos wrestling massive psychic concepts dealing with tons of fun perversion but but also the massive weirdo part that that's probably the standout feature here. Okay let's I mean let's get into the big discourse then let's get into the big discourse let's get into the Twin Peaks as Deloza Gatari and Commentary on schizophrenia.
5:05Wamp wamp wamp the alarms go off and we're immediately surrounded by a thousand angry leftists with massive books they wanted to throw it up. Okay where would you like to kind of start with this because we have to talk about we have to talk about Harold. Yeah we have to talk about Harold the one-armed man we have to talk about just fucking leo and everybody chooses Christ. Okay there's a lot here there's a lot to unpack it's a lot to unpack. So okay okay Harold where do you want to start with this one because Harold features prominently in this episode. I think it's a good it's good to start with this character. Okay so Harold has made an offer to Donna right which is to say that like he's going to include her in the living narrative of the living novel of Twin Peaks that he's working on that he's responsible for if he lets her read the diary and there is their relationship is like they're sort of intrigued by each other right they're sort of intrigued by one another and of course Donna decides that they have to take the diary.
6:23Yeah I'm what do you think of how this plays out? So there's something that's really interesting that's going on between Harold the one-armed man and establishing psychic legitimacy. Yes. Right so Harold has Laura Palmer's secret diary. Harold informs us and Donna that there's nothing in it that's going to help solve the murder. It's these are just some of Laura's secret thoughts. That's it all that's in there is a mystery there's nothing that's going to help you. Right and then we have the one-armed man right who you know we can go back to the giant's clue without chemicals he points to talk about psychopharmacology and how that functions in a larger capitalistic context and we could also talk about the fact that he is and the almost classical
7:17Greek sense of the word a schizophrenic a person split in twain. But what I think is really interesting here is when these characters are being pressed and when they're being questioned you know whoever is trying to establish this kind of like punitive legitimacy questions whether or not they are schizophrenic. Right and that it's essentially meaningless right like they're not asking a question with meaning they're attempting to create a discursive category. Right they're not asking like what is the state of your psyche and how does that change how you perceive the world you know like they don't care about the one-armed man they don't care about Harold when they're asking that they're attempting to place Harold or the one-armed man into like these del legitimized psychic taxa so that they can then be oppressed by the state in some way so then you can strap the one-armed man to a table for the rest of his life until you meet him then you can break into Harold's home and steal his stuff if he's crazy he has no rights and his meanings don't matter yeah yeah and I think this ties into how Leo is treated as well right if you become yes if you if you are suddenly I mean this is this is a kind of like very basic point and is is played out in a lot of different socially constructed categories but if you become if you are or you become something that can be placed outside of the category of the normative however that is enforced in in in sconstant kind of police then you are it kind of robbed of any moral agency as well right you you don't get to be agential right this is this is exactly the point because the discourse around schizophrenia and crime is about culpability and specifically responsibility and the same thing happens to Leo Leo who is now in I suppose what we would call kind of coma of sorts yeah or a or a or a vegetative state for now or I think coma is a better word yeah he becomes a kind of he becomes a kind of pop it and in fairness the way that he gets treated I'm not wild about I think it's I think it's it's interesting what happens to Leo as another way in which you know the right outcome the just outcome is often a kind of predicate for like no actual justice right but really is sort of in your sort of punishment yes like that's let's like I think it's worth really unpacking what's going on with Leo because Leo Leo's a huge scumbag oh an awful person yeah yeah just just just just just just an absolute monster of a human being right he abuses his partner he's engaged in all the all the non-good kinds of crime you know he's he's not out there robin hooding he's not out there supplying cannabis to consenting adults he's doing he's doing murders yes he's doing financial arsons yeah he's not a fun guy he's not he's he is he is he is a pretty unambiguously bad guy yeah it's a safe to say we can call him bad but I think it's I think you're absolutely right what happens to him is incredibly complicated and I think the person that the show is attempting to it or the show is effectively inditing here as us the viewer because we we kind of join uh Shelley and Bobby and they're kind of like sick tormenting of of the now comatose Leo but but of course Shelley only keeps him around because there's a health insurance policy so she's kind of like very she's both financially vulnerable and very dependent and I think it's which I think yeah in the next episode we will I think it's an except is in demons yes I think it's I think it's so I think it's so yeah we find out just how kind of deep that goes and the kind of but Bobby is interested in revenge right Bobby's interested in is it interest here is in is in punishment is in and you go I kind of see it but this doesn't vote well if you Bobby like like like it's it's easy to sympathize with the kind of like like libidinal desires here right like the household libidinal libidinal economy of Shelley
11:48Bobby and Leo why they're doing this to him yeah like like this vindictive desire to punish but like yeah as we see in the court case that runs parallel to this you you can't punish Leo anymore you know like Leo Leo Leo isn't home to punish right this is like sentencing someone in absensia right yeah he's he's he's not the one being so this is why it's I say it's like it has nothing to do with justice Leo's not being punished here yeah right because as you pointed out Leo is is not really registering what's happening to him as punishment so there are some really interesting theories of justice around over it's kind of like sloshing around into in peaks and again it's this idea of like you you you can't change anything without reciprocal recognition of the past and it's various kinds of violence right you can't change anything um oh yeah I like in the you know notes you just mentioned the cyborg manifesto and maybe maybe you could explain why okay uh so there uh there's a huge Donna Hurrow we call out in this in this episode uh uh that is that's that's a bit by the way
13:05I don't think that's intentional on the slightest but there's a character named Mr. Pinkle um who's another we we have we have a lot of like fun walk on guys and here in here in early season two every episode gives us a new fun guy that just walks into the show uh and Mr. Pinkle sells medical supplies right he he's he is going to retrofit the Leo Shelley homestead with all of the equipment they need to take care of the now comatose Leo um and uh he's he's he's trying he's trying to hook them on the sale for some apparatus and he says he says the outstanding line a woman is like a machine which which I only assume that that was a complicated if fumbled reference to the cyborg manifesto yeah yeah and really interesting politics on gender and living cybernetics yes absolutely that's that's exactly what it has to be okay yeah I that that couldn't just be a throw away a bit of misogyny that had to be a 3d chess left political theory commentary uh but that does like I I really like his interactions with Shelley and Bobby and and the Leo right because she Shelley Shelley and Bobby are like oh we've got this cash cow we're gonna get $5,000 a month from the health insurance payouts and and they never take a moment to sit down and think that oh no we're in a mirror yeah it's like
14:33Shelley and Bobby you know where you live right you must see you you must know that that is not happening that that is getting hoovered up by by every every medical apparatus dealer in the tri-state area uh which again without spoiling too much is exactly what happens
14:57I think the other thing uh that we should kind of connect this to is the bail hearing um because again you know you have like the arguments around Leo and like legal capacity but what do you think about that hearing and as I put it in the notes how you get how to avoid jail so this I think I think for for me the thing that stands out here is a lot of what I talked about in a previous episode about American crime drama television you know because like what watching this episode I was just thinking a lot about your own comments on twin the what is the genre of twin peaks what kind of a show are we watching yeah and when we get these crime drama moments like I think about like criminal minds and CIS the the kind of like you know like new the the new like high water marks for American crime fantasy or even true crime shows right it's heavily pro cop heavily pro law enforcement it is just there's almost wall to wall cop again uh and here we've got like this prosecutor trying to argue that Leo can stand trial and Leo Leo is comatose there's no Leo there to stand trial okay even the judge is like what can we also talk about the the cocktail that they all decide to drink oh yeah yeah but what do you got what do you got mostly that that just seems to be the worst to drink in existence and how many other how many other like a terrible fictional cocktails have you found
16:34um so I I I once went to a three day twin peaks season three the return uh like episode premiere party um and there were many bad twin peaks themed cocktails a lot a lot of a lot of people have this bizarre temptation to make the fish in the percolator work as a cocktail yeah and okay yeah you can't do it so this is this is the black eucon sucka punch I was just looking up the um I was just looking up the uh uh the name for it and it oh let's let's let's do let's do some mixology here how how would I make one of these yeah it's uh it almost pretty immediately um kind of turns me off the recipe that I found because it involves one of my least favorite things to put in a cocktail which are egg whites um I just mmm just don't think you should do it I just don't think you should do it so I I just pulled up because I want to agree with your statement completely but also uh two ounces bourbon one ounce sweet vermouth preferably coffee infused one teaspoon uh cremdick a cow and then uh uh blue whipped cream you know what you know what I'm you know no no no we're not making no we're never going to make the way the way what yeah had me for a second there um yeah and there's a there's a there's a line there's a line where there is this kind of argument about what justice is where it's they say here's as deserving of a trial as this community is of a sense of revolution of resolution rather mm-hmm and I'm like this is what this is what the trial is right the trial is not really an objective for justice it's a it's a kind of narrative prosthesis it's a way of trying to neatly resolve the contradictions and problems of the death of Laura Palmer without actually resolving them in all of that cosmic weirdness that they get into we which is incredibly damning of our real world lived condition right like if this is true in the goofy mysterious and sometimes spooky world of twin peaks like oh I got I got bad news I got bad news about the world literally everybody else
19:07if you like fixing problems you are not going to like this system that we have no indeed because we have the system of global capital which which of course brings us to Mr. Togimora
19:25oh listeners who have watched beyond the orchids curse and know the secret of Mr. Togimora we're going to hold off on that one until we get there okay okay we we will do so we will do so otherwise that's all we'll talk about for like three or four episodes okay yeah we'll keep up how to dry as it were um what should we talk about instead which we move on to well I think I think there are interesting things about Mr. Togimora that we can talk about before the big reveal which which will no doubt be that entire episode um but so we we've already had the since season one right like twin twin peaks is as much as it is focalized as like a local show of the Pacific Northwest and full of Pacific Northwest flair it's it's also a show about global capitalism yeah yeah and and how how the kind of like international machinations of finance just completely railroad the lives of average people the world over because if this is happening if if the ghost wooded project is is affecting the people the local residents of twin peaks in ways that they can't articulate because they simply do not know imagine what's going on with with all of those Swedes
20:44I know that Icelandic aren't they? Or Icelandic Icelandic I'm sorry sorry to our sweet Swedish listeners out there in the audience I know we are the 42nd most popular film and television podcast in in northern europe which which which got a got a shout out got to apologize pretty pretty stiff competition because the media and culture criticism podcasts since we didn't they're pretty good fire just pure paradoxically they're pure fire even though it's very cold again we we apologize to our Swedish listener and we should move on
21:25oh yes fun of bounds here in the town of twin peaks
21:31so well wouldn't it wouldn't be a twin peaks retrospective episode without having to talk about some kind of fellow centristism so how do you feel about cigars man Ben Benhorn and his enormous phallic cigar that he is constantly putting in his mouth there is there is this
21:55just checking some detail yeah it's it's really just that the cigar is the symbol of power right you know there's the old Freudian joke a cigar sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and you have to go well no it isn't it's never just a cigar because of everything that it represents the way that the function of this cigar absolutely I was gonna say the cigar is least a cigar for someone who insists it is just a cigar correct um yeah and what do you what do you think then about Benhorn and perhaps we can think about him in relation to Audrey and Cooper in this episode and in the next episode as well I so this this episode we're about to get into Cooper's daring rescue of Audrey in the Gothic catacombs that is Canada but we you know Benhorn is the perfect Gothic patriarch hundreds of years of Gothic fiction and it wasn't until Frost and Lynch that this guy was really hammered out yeah thank you Horus Walpole thank you Van Radcliffe thank you uh Frost and Lynch
23:08but his his focus on this I think this is such a this is such an important feature of the classic Gothic patriarch too is not only or the this kind of then not only are they a patriarchal tyrant but it is that it is that patricentricity that effectively shuts off their ability to see and connect with the rest of the world around him he literally does not know that he almost did it sexually assault his daughter right because he was so bound up in his own patricentric logics yeah and here he is like deep-throating a cigar in a in a long and detailed shot for our amusement while all of this is still happening while a business that he ostensibly owns has imprisoned his daughter literally yes yeah yeah and you know there's this there's this question really of like do you this is this this gets expressed most clearly in the in the stuff around the diary but there's this question of like do you really want to know what the ultimate secret is do you really want to have all of this stuff come out you know uh Ben Horton's relationship with Audrey the real truth of what's in Laura's diary um and I think this is the show not only just commenting on its own storylines and its own kind of character motivations but also the kind of central problem of genre television which is the desire for the the kind of tension between there's always more mystery that has to be unfolded but at a certain point things have to resolve yes so what do you think about that particularly in the in the in the in the context of how this episode ends as well I I was going to say there's a certain part of the ending of this episode that I think is an a perfect example of like oh you want your mysteries unraveled well I will show you what what an absence of satisfaction feels like and that's and that's Cooper's daring rescue of Audrey Horton you know because because so Cooper Cooper and Sheriff Truman go to one hijacks to rescue all Cooper has finally found the night that Audrey left yes and so so they're up there on on an elite secret stealth mission
25:21I and you know like there's a lot of good like you know like kind of like spy action stuff that's happening there there's a good shootout you know the rescue Audrey and the right at the end the bad guys get the drop on Cooper he's he's gunned down you know like it's it's curtains for our detective and then Hawk shows up and like throws a knife through the dude and I forget what he says but it's something along lines of walk a walka invite me to the party next time and then like a sick guitar riff kicks in right yeah then there's an explosion in the background and they jet ski away but no and I think that's such a good example of like like here here's this amazingly tense moment that they set up right like like you know Cooper has just like there's a lot of great tension in the rescue they just make it through black he is dead you know genre no has escaped there's there's so much like like oh who's around like they're splitting up at certain points they're looking around corners they're they're like there's some party at one hijacks going on that they're trying to slip through and then like right at the end it's just like the it's just like getting a bunch of cold water dumped on you right like it it's just like snuffs snuffs out all of the tension and the excitement with a little gag and of course and it's this kind of the same thing happens to Donor and Marty but from the opposite point of view right because they end up in serious trouble right at the end but it once again there is no resolution for them because that's that's sort of like the show giving you the giving you the hook of like the tune in next time for more of the incredible exploits
27:03absolutely and and I think that this really fits with a lot of like lynches sensibilities as an artist right you know like nothing ends there is no resolution you know like we're not a book you never turn the page the chapter never ends the story goes on forever every every moment of you builds into the next every part of your past weaves into the future you know like like you you can never you know isolate parts of yourself you can never truly cancel out something that you've been and like twin Twin Peaks is like okay wrestle with that so sometimes it's funny sometimes it's important other times it sucks but it is it is in fact the way we exist in this world that's our exit line right now twin Peaks well that was a really good way of summing up oh thank you well listeners I hope you enjoyed our discussion of episode 12 the orchids curse and we'll be back next week for episode 13 demons
28:12diet is that we have more questions than we have answers a new episode new episode and you're gonna kick out of this one if the long history of the reception of owls reveals one thing it is that we have more questions than we have answers