Subject: Major glaring diary discrepancy? (and some MAJOR dissatisfaction)
From: bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Date: 1990-12-04, 17:20
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

A few questions for thought:

(1) When was the date of that last entry from Laura's diary that Mrs.
Tremond gave to Donna?

An earlier post says:

        February 23.  Tonight is the night that I die.  ...

... which would mean that Laura had her diary right up to the day before
she wandered out to the railroad car in the woods.

(2) When did she give the diary to Harold Smith?

At least a week or so before she died.  I seem to remember something
in the diary (as seen in a bookstore near you!) that she gave the
diary to Harold to prevent anything more from happening to it.

Which leaves the question:

(3) How did she get to the diary to make a last entry in it on the day
that she died, and then get that back to Harold?

"She went to visit Harold."  No, I get the feeling that we would have
been told if Laura had visited Harold on that day.

"She had pages of the diary still with her, and she wrote on those,
which were the bloodied ones found in the train car."  No again; I
think those were the ones that BOB had stolen, and then anyway how
would the page be neatly sent to Mrs. Tremond's mailbox with Donna's
name on it?

And I don't think Harold had anything to do with it -- you think he
would have willingly parted with even a single page?

I can just see Lynch and Frost sitting over a dimly-lit table, rubbing
their hands gleefully and conjuring up all sorts of ways to inject new
clues into the story with a hypodermic needle.

Contrived.  Too contrived, too clean, too neat.  Who cares who killed
Laura Palmer?  Leland was her murderer -- but he didn't _know_ that he
was, so basically Lynch is saying that everything that made the
audience think incriminated him, really _didn't_, because he's really
innocent at heart.  The whole first season contributed nothing --
sure, it was a really interesting social panorama, but now that you
know whodunit, it's obvious that nothing points to Leland any more
than anyone else from the first season.

And now the whole thing is cleared up in a dream.  I could see if
Laura named some man in Cooper's dream whom Cooper had never met,
maybe -- but wouldn't it have made a greater impact if he had really
been told that it was her _father_?  Just say that he had dreamed the
dream on the very first night, and remembered; this mystery could
easily have been over within a day or two.  Similarly, it could have
been dragged out for another season (renewed? Ha!).  The whole
resolution to the case rested not on the deductive abilities of an FBI
agent, but instead on when he would remember one fact from one dream.

It's as if Lynch is trying to say we're silly for thinking all those
little clues and suggestions and hidden references actually meant
something in the final reckoning.  Pardon me for trying to make sense
of any of it!

Now the writers are probably dancing in the streets.  "The murder's
over.  It's SOAP-OPERA TIME!"  Time to watch the hilarious antics of
Nadine back in high school again!  (Not.)  Gee, maybe BOB is posessing
the principal?

And, now that the case is closed, is there any reason for Cooper to
stay in town?  I'm eager to see how they work their way out of _that_
one.

It's the opinion of me and several other Twin Peaks one-time addicts
that this episode was merely a hallucination.  Lynch, go back and do
it the _right_ way.

     << Brian >>

| Brian S. Kendig      \ Macintosh |   Engineering,   | bskendig             |
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