Twin Peaks: The Orchid's Curse   Rewatch 
September 9, 2014 7:23 AM - Season 2, Episode 5 - Subscribe

As Coop finds Audrey's long lost secret message, he decides to stage a raid on One-Eyed Jack's. Bobby and Shelly scheme as Leo returns home. The roadhouse becomes an ad-hoc courtroom for Leland's trial. Donna makes a deal with Harold. Nadine experiences a homecoming.

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 the Glass, Laura's Secret Diary

Bonus Stuff: Part 1 of a 5 part video series... The cast of Twin Peaks on Donahue! Spoiler, Donahue suspects Leo Johnson.
posted by codacorolla (10 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I like the part where Hawk straight up murders a dude and then jokes about it, in the same episode (or maybe it was last week's episode) in which Cooper chastises Dr Hayward for condoning murder ("Do you approve of murder, Doctor Hayward?").

This has nothing to do with the episode, but I met Sheryl Lee at a convention over the weekend, and she is pretty much the sweetest woman ever.
posted by Timmoy Daen at 7:51 AM on September 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


Also, this is nitpicky but this is currently listed as "Season 2, Episode 13" whereas the previous Season 2 episodes were numbered 1, 2, 3, etc, so shouldn't this be "Season 2, Episode 5"?
posted by Timmoy Daen at 7:57 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I just watched the Psych Twin Peaks parody and was surprised to find myself happy to see Harold show up in a significant role.

This is the episode when they introduce Squiggy as a salesman, and he just sort of lingers around for the rest of the series. David Lander must rank at near the top of "people you forgot were in Twin Peaks."
posted by maxsparber at 9:01 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like the part where Hawk straight up murders a dude and then jokes about it

It's well established at this point that Canada is a lawless demimonde of drugs, violence, and debauchery, the sort of place where nobody asks questions about dead guys with giant Bowie knife wounds in their back. So forget about it Jake, it's Canadatown...
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:19 PM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


Shit! I was posting in a rush to try and get back in time to catch the earliest possible window for the cable repair guy, and mislabeled the episode number... It turns out I was actually 4 hours earlier than I needed to be.

This feels like a stop-gap episode where they're just putting everything they need to in place, which is probably the first time I've had that feeling in this rewatch.

I don't know what it is, but I have a really hard time watching the Bobby and Shelly domestic stuff this season. Nadine's arc is tied for my least favorite of the show. The Harold stuff is just goofy as hell. More Andy buffoonery. The Audrey rescue is OK, but eh...

The trial is definitely the high-point, but even that's not stellar.

I do recommend watching at least some of the Donnahue episode. If for nothing else than Eric DaRae's hair.
posted by codacorolla at 2:26 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think my problem with the Bobby-Shelly-ZombieLeo storyline stems from how it really drags Shelly's character through the dirt. She was fairly sympathetic early on -- a battered woman trying to escape a desperate situation, etc. -- but once the insurance scam kicks in, it all turns kind of unseemly. Maybe that was the intention, but it comes across as an unpleasant way to go with the characters.
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:28 PM on September 9, 2014


She did mock Leland leaping onto Laura's grave in one of the first episodes, so there has always been an edge to her character.
posted by maxsparber at 4:44 PM on September 9, 2014


Though I agree that it was pretty insensitive, I took Shelly's dishing on the Palmers as more of an early indication that not everyone in town was necessarily on the same page with regard to Laura's perfect-princess status. In a lot of ways (marries young, drops out of school, smokes cigarettes!), Shelly is the stereotypical "bad girl" that Laura was the supposed antithesis of, and she's one of the more socially isolated characters on the show. For most of the series she seems to exist in a little three-person play with just herself, Bobby, and Leo, occasionally venturing outside of that framework to cameo in other people's plotlines. So I'll forgive a little cattiness directed towards the town's social elites...
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:42 PM on September 10, 2014


BTW, the Donohue episode is completely worth everyone's time. I just listened to the audio at work and it's an amazing time capsule of where TV was in 1990. Judging from the ecstatic/confused reactions from the studio and call-in audience, we wouldn't truly be ready for that level of serialized creativity on television until HBO got into the game 10 years later with The Sopranos, but it got everyone really excited about the possibilities of TV in a way that nothing else did at the time.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:52 PM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Fixed ep number, carry on.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:51 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


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