Season 2, Episode 07: Lonely Souls — November 10–16, 1990

In article <8296@gollum.twg.com> lefty@twg.com ("Lefty") writes:
> >In article <27234@cs.yale.edu> long-morrow@CS.YALE.EDU (H. Morrow Long) 
> >writes:
>> >> I have heard that TP starts earlier than 10PM in Mountain and Pacific time
>> >> zones, is that true?
> >
> >Nope.
> >
> >10 pm out here on the Left Coast.

Yep.

9 pm here in mountain time.  (which would make it 8pm Pacific - so
we get to see it 2 hours before the west coast.  Nyea, nyea, nyea.)

-- Scott Amspoker | Basis International, Albuquerque, NM | "I'm going out for a sandwich" (505) 345-5232 | - Ben unmvax.cs.unm.edu!bbx!bbxsda!scott |

I am for you, dkrause@orion.oac.uci.edu (Doug Krause).
> >In Episode 1 Cooper says to Diane that Twin Peaks is 5 miles south of the
> >Canadian border and 12 miles east of the *state* border.  No state speci-
> >fied at that time.

I'm not sure if you're joking, but in case you aren't: There're
only two states bordering Washington, and only one of them reaches as
far as Canada--Idaho.  Maybe lynchfrost rearranged the state borders
in their fictional Washington, but there've been no other signs of
major geographic shuffling.

(Moving the Cascade range a few hundred miles to the right
doesn't count as "major geographic shuffling," as far as I'm concerned.
Happens all the time 'round these parts. :) )

-- Evan A.C. Hunt evanh@sco.COMThe Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. uunet!sco!evanh (408) 425-7222 evanh%sco.COM@ucscc.ucsc.EDU

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

I've seen a lot of people speculating on why Leland killed
all those people, with the emphasis being on devious plots etc.
I think it's much simpler.  He got pissed, & when he gets angry, 
BOB takes over.  when he gets ANY impulse to do something socially
unacceptable (read 'evil' not 'weird') BOB takes over.  When Leland
felt sexually attracted to his own daughter, BOB takes over 'cause
Leland can't handle it.  When Leland gets suspicious & follows Laura
out to the cabin, he becomes irate & BOB takes over.  When Maddy, 
who has been what Leland wanted Laura to be, ie sweet, says she's
leaving, Leland is resentful & BOB takes over.  Since we don't know
the details of the Banks murder, we can make up a scenario to fit 
any theory we please.  The letters, however, are not in the scope 
of this posting.

"Leland says you're going back to Missoula, MONTANA!"
George.Harris@samba.acs.unc.eduGe|ge

In article <1990Nov5.221535.12321@watserv1.waterloo.edu> broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) writes:

[The theory that Cooper's hunch about BOB being at the Great Northern is
wrong, but the place actually being Calhoun Memorial Hospital - deleted]

> >This sounds very good to me.  The only objection I have is that Cooper's
> >strong hunch (that it's the Great Northern) would be incorrect, a first
> >for Cooper (as far as we know).

Is that true?  At the end of Season 1, as he is walking back to his hotel
room, doesn't he say to Diane (via the recorder) that he is almost certain
that Leo Johnson is the killer of LP?  Didn't that turn out to be wrong?

-- Tak Ariga, Dictionary of Old English Project, University of Toronto, Canada tak@doe.utoronto.ca tak@doe.toronto.edu utdoe!tak +1 416 978 8883

Just a quick quiz on spirits...

What does Cooper say about two things happening @ the same time?

He says pay attention.

Who have we seen @ ~ the same time as the giant?

The World's Most Decrepit Room Service Waiter.

What can we conclude from this?

The Giant has some connection to TWMDRSW (duh!)

Okay, who is the *only* person associated with Mike (the
spirit, not the football player)?

Philip Gerard, the one-armed shoe salesman.

Okay, so two of the three spirits that have been associated
with people more than once have been associated with *only one person*

With me so far?

The third spirit who has been associated with a person is BOB.

BOB has been associated with Leland.

Can one therefore conclude that BOB flits from body to body
with all the skiitishness of a hummingbird on cocaine?

You tell me, & try to keep a straight face.

"Leland says you're going back to Missoula, MONTANA!"
George.Harris@samba.acs.unc.eduGe|ge

I love it -- really, I do.

At lunchtime Friday, our nameless friend 'rslugg' is seized with an
idea:

> >Could people please not cite the diary in this newsgroup, except when Coop
> >or someone reads from it.  As one post has suggested, the "ultra-secret"
> >diary of Laura Palmer could be used to justify any oddball theory.
> >Perhaps an alt.tv.twin-peaks.diary group needs to be formed for those who
> >try to mix the two sources.  Lets keep this group confined to facts and
> >observations obtainable from from still-frames or slo-mo on a good VCR,
> >and speculations based on facts, not on other speculations.  

Everybody got that?  The newsgroup traffic is heavy because we're
quoting the "ultra-secret" diary.  (Apparently a working definition of
"ultra-secret" is "rslugg didn't buy a copy.")  If we could just stop
quoting it, or quote it in some other newsgroup!, then things would die
down and rslugg would be happy.  Only the TV show itself, plus VCR
freeze-framing (I guess it's OK to discriminate against non-VCR viewers
since rslugg has one, huh) should be allowed in.  By rights this also
should mean that Mark Frost interviews, TV Guide excerpts, and series
renewal announcements are also off limits, since they didn't appear in
the TV show either.  Maybe EACH of those things should get its own
newsgroup too!

> >                                                             I have seen
> >so many posts that senor drool cup is the giants host that I almost feel I
> >as though it is an established fact, like SDC was transformed into the
> >giant on stage, not Julie Cruise.

This is apparently meant to be an example of what happens when we quote
that nasty old diary, although *I* for one can't find the room service
waiter, the Giant *or* JulEe Cruise mentioned in it.  Maybe there's a
SECOND secret diary??

----------

Well, never mind, because by 5pm that same afternoon, rslugg has had it!
Time's up, results are in, this can't go on any longer!

> >Subject: I am creating alt.tv.twin-peaks.diary
> >
> >Thre traffic to alt.tv.twin-peaks is becoming huge, and a large part of this is
> >because of people posting excerpts from the diary.  

Sound familiar?

> >                                                    The diary isn't helping,
> >it's pages can support any theory!  Please discuss excerpts from the super-
> >secret diary in alt.tv.twin-peaks.diary.
> >:wq!
 ^^^^ why keep your choice of editor under a bushel, eh!  :-)

-------------

Anyway this is all horse****.  Anyone who doesn't want to read postings
mentioning the diary can filter them with a newsreader kill file.  In rn
it would go

/diary/a:j

and there are equivalents for other packages.  Splitting the newsgroups
along lines of PERSONAL preference is damfool nonsense.  There are at
least five splits I could think of with more justification than this
lamebrained proposal, and they're all equally bad ideas.

Lastly, floating an idea like that and then bulling on through with it
five hours later without a single followup or response having appeared
in the interim, is strictly amateur hour.

-- US out of North America, NOW!! /: Tom Neff -- Richard O'Rourke :/ tneff%bfmny0@UUNET.UU.NET

What a terrific theory! (About BOB being Leland's imaginary
playmate.) It makes the most emotional sense to me of anything
I read here since the last episode. 

I also think that BOB does not hop from body to body. I think
the idea of BOB being in Ben is simply ludicrous and I still
want Laura's murder to have some kind of *reason*, not just
psychopathy. I though I would be disappointed if Leland was
the murderer because I thought that would make it meaningless -
but it really doesn't. If it's Ben though, I'll give up in
disgust. That's just too ridiculous.


-- c2h5oh@ucscb.ucsc.edu | "The forces of evil can marshal even | more support than the forces of good, | especially when pizza is served."