Twin Piques: A Millennial’s Journey Through Twin Peaks (Part 4)

[CBS/Showtime]

Twin Peaks, Episode 8. Or: Now that you’ve finally learned everyone’s names, let’s kill off half the cast!

We zoom in on…palm trees? Twin Peaks is no place for palm trees!

Oh. It’s a mural in Dr. Jacoby’s office. This isn’t surprising.

Donna is upset when she hits a button and beach-y cabana music starts playing. Look, Donna, why are you hitting buttons, this is like Snooping 101. She does find the coconut that has the tape and the half of Laura’s necklace, though, so I gotta give her that.

Jacoby, meanwhile, is creeping on Maddie-as-Laura when he’s beaten by a dude in a mask. Okay, y’all, I respect the season finale hustle. The dude leaves when James and Donna show up.

Back at One Eyed Jack’s, Ed is losing a lot. Cooper is doing pretty swell, probably because he’s counting cards. His dealer is none other than Jacques Renault. Cooper introduces himself as a friend of Leo’s, and gives Jacques the coin that’s the other part of the fragment found in Laura’s stomach.

Cooper and Renault get a drink. Haha! I knew he was counting cards. Cooper pretends to be the guy financing Leo’s operation, and gets Renault on the hook for a job, paying him with that sweet, sweet FBI cash. Cooper makes the mistake of asking Jacques about the chip. Apparently, Laura was tied up–“she liked that,” says Renault, which wow 90s–and Waldo got out of her cage and started pecking her. Leo put the chip in her mouth and said, “bite the bullet, baby.”

Renault thinks this is hi-larious. Cooper kinda looks like he’s trying not to throw up, maybe because there’s also an extensive mouth close-up involved.

[Image via CBS/Showtime]

Okay, y’all, I respect the season finale hustle.

Scene cut to Shelly washing her hair in the sink with a gun.

Well, Shelly washing her hair in the sink with the gun next to her, but she’s obsessed enough with the gun that it wouldn’t surprise me if the gun was an active part of her self-care routine. Regardless, Leo gets the jump on her.

Scene cut! The police squad successfully arrests Renault while he’s waiting to fill his part of his deal with Cooper. President Sheriff is a dodo and turns his back to Renault, giving Jacques ample time to grab another deputy’s gun because this whole department is incompetent.

Or maybe not, because Overly Empathetic Policeman shoots him! Maybe I need to rethink his name!

Meanwhile, Leo leaves Shelly tied up in a shack with an alarm set off to burn both it–and her–down.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Josie is paying off Manslaughter McDiner. He wants more? Oh daaaayum, did McDiner kill her husband? Do I have to change his name?

Obvious symbolism is obvious:

[Image via Showtime/CBS]He spouts some bullshit, Josie doesn’t buy it. Can we not with the “Oriental philosophy?” Is this a thing with every monologuing white man on this show?

Here’s a new thing: he cuts her thumb and his thumb. It’s pretty gross. Josie steps up the weird factor and smears her thumb-blood on her lips. Josie: Murder McDiner Lipstick for Her.

[Image via CBS/Showtime]Catherine is tearing up the mill office looking for the other ledger. Pete comes in and they have a Talk, much to the onlooking mill workers’ delight. She straight-up crocodile tears him and he falls for it. Pete, this woman has been abusing you for years, buddy. Catherine gets a call informing her where the ledger is.

Josie: Murder McDiner Lipstick for Her.

As strangely fitting for a Twin Peaks season finale, there’s a lot going on at the hospital. Cooper and President Sheriff are interviewing Renault. He says that he and Leo got into a fight because Leo hit him with a whiskey bottle–no, Leo didn’t hit him with the bottle during the fight, he did it unprompted. Chalk another one up for the Leo is an Unmitigated Asshole category. Renault went outside and passed out. When he came to, Leo and the girls were gone.

Jacoby is also in the hospital; I guess he’d had a heart attack after being beaten in the woods while creeping on Not-Laura. He says he saw Laura.

Now Murder McDiner is calling Daddy Warbucks? Everyone knows everyone. This is a fun code: “Time to black flag that little firebug. Leo Johnson’s gonna get a house call.”

Daddy Warbucks gives the go-ahead.

Bobby is not in the hospital. Instead, he’s up to being a damn dingbat and going to Leo and Shelly’s house again. Shelly is not there, but Leo is! He goes after him with a friggin’ axe like he’s a crappy horror movie villain. Just as Leo’s about to deliver the Death Swing, Leo gets shot through the window, probably by Murders Everyone McDiner. Bobby leaves him on the couch, which seems about right.

Leo gets shot through the window, probably by Murders Everyone McDiner.

Catherine finds Shelly and the dirty ledger in the mill shed that’s going up in flames. She’s very calm about the whole thing; Shelly is not. Catherine cuts Shelly down and they both escape. Pete sees the shed and Catherine’s car and goes charging in after his crocodile tears wife. Now is not the time, Pete! Everyone’s dying in this episode!

Finally, the episode appears to be drawing to an end. Our boy Cooper walks back into the hotel, chattering happily away to Diane and–

Cooper got shot.

COOPER. GOT. SHOT.

SO HELP ME, DAVID LYNCH.

Next: Twin Piques: A Millennial’s Journey Through Twin Peaks (Part 3)

Other important bits of Episode 8:

• Audrey gets unsuspectingly all kitted out Queen-of-Diamonds style…for her unsuspecting father. Eeper.
• Nadine tries to commit suicide and Ed walks in after the fact. We don’t know if she survives.  🙁
• Lucy tells Overly Empathetic Policeman that she’s pregnant. He doesn’t take it well. :((
• Bobby leaves a police tip as Leo–which Lucy buys, what–telling them to look in James’ tank. This becomes problematic when James comes to the station to give them Laura’s tape and they do indeed find coke in his bike.
• Leland tries to suffocate Jacques in the hospital. He succeeds? He definitely cries.