Subject: Re: Second Season Failings From: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Barb Miller) Date: 1991-07-24, 04:40 Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks Reply-to: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu In article <1991Jul24.002829.20986@sequent.com> jtk@sequent.com writes: > > [in response to this comment by Rocky Giovinazzo: >> > > >> > >WE didn't fit in either? I thought WE was very well worked >> > >into the show. My only complaint is that Cooper's brain suddenly >> > >turned to mush about half way through when he was suddenly unable to >> > >keep up with WE. (i.e. the genius agent didn't examine the bonsai and >> > >didn't figure out the planetary signs on the map for a couple of > > days).] > > > > Sorry, I have to agree with the previous poster. WE was a totally > > annoying and obnoxious character. I don't believe he fit in with the > > show either. > > [some deletions of examples of problems in the character] > > I guess, really, it was a case of bad writing. When we saw that > > vagrant tied up/killed pointing to the chess board in the Sheriff's > > office--that gave me chills. Too bad the writers decided to go to > > WE's point-of-view. It's difficult to maintain suspense when you do > > that! I think you may be right about the point of view problem. I thought the concept of Windom Earle was pretty good--a former mentor of Cooper's, a brilliant mind totally possessed by evil and a desire for a perverse revenge, inextricably tied up with a great tragedy of Cooper's personal life, never seen by Cooper directly but in periodic communication through such bizarre scenes as the vagrant at the chessboard. Rather like BOB in his ability to cause pain and suffering gratuitously, and in the difficulty of predicting what he would do next. Trouble was, since we saw Windom Earle plotting, we the audience knew what he was going to do next, so we lost that sense of vague dread. It may also have been that, unlike Leo, who would clearly strike out at any minute, Windom Earle was plotting so carefully that we could see coming anything horrible that he was going to do. Had we not seen Windom Earle as an embodied character, week after week, and followed his plotting, would it have been so necessary for Cooper to appear so bumbling? The business about the bonsai, for instance, seemed much too simple a technique for a genius like Windom Earle to use against an agent like Cooper, whom he knew to be very bright (or he wouldn't have wanted to fight him so much). I can believe that Harry's wish for the gift to really be from Josie could overtake his suspicion about it, but I would have expected Cooper to at least check it out. Had Windom Earle used a more clever means of becoming omniscient, or simply relied on the psychological connection between himself and Cooper to be able to anticipate what Cooper would be thinking, it could have become more sinister and interesting. But much harder to write. And of course, we would have lost Gordon's YELL into the bonsai. :-) A connection was drawn in Cooper's mind between his fuzzy-headedness and his being in love. But, viewed another way, the nearness of Windom Earle could have had a rather dulling effect on him. While there was no question in Cooper's mind that Windom Earle was capable of terrible evil, he had also been Cooper's mentor, and probably something of a father figure to him (which could cast his relationship with Caroline with overtones of a throwback to his lost mother, but that's a different thread). Put in psychological terms, if Cooper's father-complex were activated by the perceived presence of Windom Earle, he could easily find himself unconsciously interfering with his own efforts to outwit his former mentor. This is sounding more Freudian than I had intended; retreating to myth for a moment, a classic father-son conflict is Jupiter and Saturn. And where have we heard about THEM before? I'm starting to ramble way off the track here. While I'm tempted to go into a lot more detail on a number of the ideas that I have brought up but not supported in the above paragraph, I'll spare the net at this point and let anyone respond to them if they're interested. Barb Miller