Subject: running it Inn to the Ground - revisited
From: pouncy@campus.swarthmore.edu
Date: 1990-11-16, 20:30
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

We still think Ben Horne killed Laura and here's why:

1.  The secret to the show is not who BOB is, or even
who hosts BOB, but why BOB kills, why BOB's crime wave
has been happening now and why it involves the whole darn town.
As we said earlier (hence the pun 
on that great post about TP spin-offs), the crime wave
is linked to property.  We think the trigger 
is the threatened sale of the mill and we 
speculate that the Great Northern Hotel was
built forty years ago on sacred Indian ground unleashing
BOB's original appearance.
We can't wait to read David Frost's sprawling epic tale of the town's
history.    

2.  Several posts about how Josie/Catherine have conspired to 
cheat Ben Horne out of his money and save the mill property
fit this scenario.  Think of this way - the show
works at several levels:  a material level  where we ask:
which human killed whom, which humans own the mill and 
what do they want to do with it.  It also has 
a spirit level where we ask which spirits killed Laura
and others; which spirits walk with fire and which spirits want to save
the woods.  Decoding these mysteries at both levels is the
show's challenge.  As the giant and friends battle BOB and aides
on one level, Josie/Catherine are apparantly in one of the many
battles in town against Ben Horne and his little pals.  Josie and
Catherine have cleverly out-witted Ben on this round.

3.  Thinking of the town's various contests means that BOB doesn't
just randomly hop between human hosts - defying the logic of good
mystery shows, rather he
engineers relationships among his aides, as the Giant, dwarf, etc
coordinate their human allies.  For example, among the several
reasons Maddie is attacked while Ben is locked up, is that it
throws suspicion away from Ben - their human ring leader.  We
still think Ben the human killed Laura the human, but Leland has
attacked Maddie.  BOB can't handle abandonment.  
He and Ben killed Laura for her effort to leave their thrall,
now Leland/BOB shows a similar murderous rage 
against the innocent Maddie for the similar `crime' of feminine
independence. (Yes, it was an astonishing powerful
piece of television drama.)

4.  Another element Lynch puts in his films is love as a 
redeeming force.  The premise of his movie Wild at Heart 
is that those in love (meaning those wild at Heart) can survive anything.
That incredibly trite and imbecilic triangle (Donna/James/Maddy)
(and poorly acted) takes on great power when you realize that in
Lynch's world the loser, or odd woman out, is damned - as in
only the Gifted and the Damned can see BOB.  As Donna and James 
sit in the roadhouse in beatific tableau, they are Lynchian survivors.  
Donna cries for the Damned.  

Diarmuid Maguire       Hillard Pouncy