Twin Peaks, Episode 2.8: Drive with a Dead Girl

Twin Peaks: Drive with a Dead Girl

Let's get right to it: Sheriff Truman and the rest of the Twin Peaks police department think they might have Laura Palmer's killer, now that Benjamin Horne is in custody. (Jerry, an incompetent lawyer, struggles to put a defense together... With Pete arriving to provide proof that Catherine is still alive, giving Ben an alibi but infuriating him.) Dale Cooper, however, is not so sure. In fact, he's closer than he thinks. BOB remains in control of Leland and is casually driving around Twin Peaks, with Maddie's corpse stuffed in his trunk. This, of course, is not the only thing happening around town.

“Drive with a Dead Girl” has a great first scene. It's an exterior shot of the Palmer house, the screams of Maddie's final moments alive audible from outside the building. It's an unnerving moment, a perfect capturing of how horrible things happen behind normal doors... And then “Twin Peaks” dives right into all the bullshit subplots I can't even begin to care about. Josie gets name-dropped by both Pete and Sheriff Truman. Bobby further concocts his plot to profit off of Leo's condition, temporarily pleasing Shelly. Most superfluously, Norma's mother and her new husband arrives in town. This has to be among the show's most irrelevant complications, a desperate attempt to give Norma and Hank something, anything, to do in the show's on-going drama.

A lot of “Drive with a Dead Girl” is filled up with stuff like this but, I'll admit, I do like some of these diversions. The continued drama around Lucy's pregnancy admittedly takes a few amusing turns here. The arrival of her obnoxious sister, played by a suitably talkative Kathleen Wilhoite, creates a funny sequence where she repeatedly interrupts a conversation between them. Caleb Deschanel returns to direct this episode and he does a good Lynch impersonation during a scene where Ben and Jerry reminiscences about their childhood girlfriend and her flashlight. It's a totally unnecessary sequence but one I sure do like a lot.

Of course, the scenes most interesting about “Drive with a Dead Girl” are those involving Leland. He comes face to face with Cooper twice, the FBI agent somehow missing his erratic behavior. (Such as a fittingly unhinged sequence of Leland driving his car while singing in a manic fashion.) The truth of the evil inside him, evident inside a mirror or simply in his trunk, is right under everyone's noses. And that's exactly the point. The everyday kind of evil that resides in people's hearts, that drives fathers to molest their own daughters, that happens behind closed doors in any town, is always right in front of us.

There's also one more scene in “Drive with a Dead Girl” that I like. Audrey has a talk with Cooper in his hotel room. In this moment, we see that Audrey really does love her father. That all her actions have been driven by a desire to receive that love from him in return, that the manipulative and ethically hollow Ben Horne was unable to give. It's also a moment that shows off what Sherilyn Fenn could achieve as an actress, when the show actually gave her something meaningful to work with.

Sometimes, “Drive with a Dead Girl” does feel a bit like “Twin Peaks” trying to drag the story line out a little longer. We already know who Laura's killer is but the show is not quite ready for the other characters to know that, just yet. While there is some bullshit to wade through, the episode still has enough potent moments to make it worth engaging with. [7/10]