Twin Peaks: Wounds and Scars Rewatch

November 11, 2014 5:56 PM - Season 2, Episode 17

Following Josie's unexplained death, Harry disappears into a bottle. Cooper and Earle's chess game escalates, testing the very limits of Pete's skill and the safety of the Hayward home. Wheeler and Audrey begin their romance in earnest, and Cooper has coffee with Norma's sister Annie, sort of. Ben puts on an all-plaid benefit fashion show, and a vicious weasel is released.

Scheduling: new episodes posted every Tuesday and Thursday. Both re-watchers and new viewers are welcome.

Watching: available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and for free on Hulu and CBS's site.

Previous Episode Threads:
Season One: Pilot, Traces to Nowhere, Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer, Rest in Pain, The One-armed Man, Cooper's Dreams, Realization Time, The Last Evening

Season Two: May the Giant Be With You, Coma, The Man Behind Glass, Laura's Secret Diary, The Orchid's Curse, Demons, Lonely Souls, Drive With a Dead Girl, Arbitrary Law, Dispute Between Brothers, Masked Ball, The Black Widow, Checkmate, Double Play, Slaves and Masters, The Condemned Woman

BONUS STUFF: New York Magazine's fashion-centric blog The Cut recently released their definitive ranking of every sweater seen on Twin Peaks.

posted by Strange Interlude (7 comments total)

The weasel scene and all the earnest build-up to it is so so deeply funny. This show manages to mash together horror and slapstick so seamlessly.
posted by heatherann at 6:58 PM on November 11, 2014

Weasel-cam is straight out of the Sam Raimi playbook. Not that it's a bad thing.
posted by rocketman at 8:08 AM on November 12, 2014

Unfortunately, they only really created outfits for Lucy and Andy for this episode, and I would liked to have seen more. They all seem like an exaggeration of Dick Tremayne's aesthetic, which I love -- it's as though he fished through the lumberjack section at Horne's to try and create a Boston Brahmin outfit for himself, and just went a step too far with the fashion show. Here is Lucy. Here is Deputy Andy.

I've often thought I would develop a look for myself inspired by this -- my girlfriend toyed with the idea of trying to work at her families tree farm, and, had we gone that route, I know how I would have dressed.
posted by maxsparber at 9:41 AM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, those rich textures in Dick's fashion show are amazing. I actually really like the Weasel plot. I feel like it's the show getting back to its roots, even if it is in a silly S2 way. Each time I watch the series I like Earle less and less. His costumes, his flat evilness and his hammy overacting are all interesting in their own way, but don't fit well with previous villains like Leo and Ben.
posted by codacorolla at 1:49 PM on November 12, 2014

Another thing I thought about on rewatch was how Truman's actor, Ontkean, does a great job at portraying Harry as a nice, even keeled guy with an edge, but doesn't sell the drunk Harry in despair (thankfully that doesn't last very long)
posted by codacorolla at 1:54 PM on November 12, 2014

The thing that gets me about Earle is how the show is so dead-set on portraying him as this elusive man of a thousand faces, even though every single one basically looks just like him wearing different colors and arrangements of crepe hair and discarded community theater costumes. Say what you will about the outlandishness (and implicit early-'90s Japan-bashing) of Catherine's "Tojimura" disguise, but at least it concealed Piper Laurie's identity, if not gender, for a few episodes before the reveal.

I guess the difference here is that Earle's disguises are intended to fool the characters, but not the audience. But on the whole, I feel like it makes a scenery-chewing villain like Earle (who made his first appearance a mere fortnight before Anthony Hopkins set the tone for the coming decade of mass-media psychopaths) come across as even more stagey.

As for the good stuff in tonight's episode: I have to admit the pine weasel hijinks didn't quite go over for me as well as they did for some folks here, but hey, different strokes for different folks. Although the fashion show is some pretty obvious story padding, there are some entertaining character bits for the secondary/tertiary cast, and getting David Lander and Ian Buchanan in the same shot is a comedic accomplishment on its own.

I liked that Michael Horse got some solid scenes in towards the beginning. Even though he defers to Cooper as the senior lawman, his interaction with Harry implies that Hawk could easily take charge of things himself. I think if the show had gone another season or two, Hawk probably would have gotten bumped up to Sheriff, which I wouldn't mind seeing happen in 2016.

I was also gratified to notice that the writers used the proper regionalism when Donna offered to get a "pop" for Earle-in-disguise. It's a throwaway detail, but it does help sell Twin Peaks as an authentic place in a recognizable world.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:48 PM on November 12, 2014

Another thing I thought about on rewatch was how Truman's actor, Ontkean, does a great job at portraying Harry as a nice, even keeled guy with an edge, but doesn't sell the drunk Harry in despair (thankfully that doesn't last very long)

Agreed. I was really charmed by him for a season and a half (although I never really bought his relationship with Josie, perhaps in retrospect a sign of bad acting to come), but during the couple episodes of Bad Harry he really felt like an Actor trying to Act, and I didn't believe in the character at all.
posted by dfan at 6:51 PM on November 13, 2014