TV Tropes Challenge: "Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends" (Twin Peaks)
For penknife's TV Tropes Challenge, I present 1184 words of meta on Twin Peaks regarding the TV Trope "Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends". Enjoy! (I hope.)
I recently got into Twin Peaks thanks to my husband, an old-school fan who held on to his beloved VHS tapes and parted with them only reluctantly when DVDs became available. I am currently watching the series through for the second time and mostly love it, but there's just something about the last few episodes that makes me a cranky fangirl. I really hate how the romantic loose ends resulting from Agent Dale Cooper's refusing Audrey Horne's advances were tied up by the quick introduction of the characters Annie Blackburne and John Justice Wheeler; the undeniable chemistry between Cooper and Audrey made the new pairings seem rushed and heavy-handed, and it didn't help that the new characters were canon Sues designed to be their perfect mates.
It's alleged that Cooper and Audrey were initially intended to become romantically involved, but that Kyle MacLachlan, who played Cooper, insisted that Cooper would never consider romance with a teenage girl. Even so, Audrey's relentless pursuit of Cooper and his daring rescue of Audrey from One-Eyed Jack's left little wiggle room to redefine their relationship. Enter adventurer and self-made millionaire John Justice Wheeler, who has admired Audrey since she was a child and is a former beneficiary of a timely investment by her father Ben. Wheeler's status as a Relationship Sue is established from his first meeting with Audrey, as detailed in the shooting script for episode 23:
Audrey finally looks up, right into the smoldering eyes of JOHN JUSTICE WHEELER - full on knock-down-drag-out handsome. Wheeler meets her glare with a friendly smile. Simple, uncomplicated.
Wheeler has come to town to repay his long-ago debt to Ben Horne by helping Ben with his faltering business ventures and his attempt to halt the Ghostwood country club development deal, which allows for another reveal of his too-good-to-be-true personality:
AUDREY (suspicious)
What exactly do you do, Mr. Wheeler?
WHEELER
Call me Jack. I buy bankrupt, failing businesses
streamline them, bring them up to speed, and then,
usually, sell them.
BEN
And at a substantial profit. But not, I should add, before
making significant environmental concessions. When
Jack's finished, the waste is re-routed, the air cleaner, the
people happier.
WHEELER (modest to a fault)
You make me sound like Santa Claus. I'm a businessman,
that's all.
Wheeler is a lonely teenage girl's dream come true: independently wealthy, a world traveler, and a good singer to boot, who serenades Audrey with cowboy songs during a hastily improvised picnic and just happens to be around to literally sweep her off her feet as she falls off the stage at a fashion show.
During the same episode in which John Justice Wheeler is introduced, we hear about the impending arrival of Annie Blackburne, the never-before-mentioned, much younger sister of Norma Jennings. Annie has decided to leave a convent, and Norma muses to her friend and co-worker Shelly about Annie, a good old-fashioned Purity Sue: "When she was little I always thought Annie was from another time and place." What better match could there be for the sensitive, otherworldly Dale Cooper?
Annie first meets Cooper in episode 24 when she serves him at Norma's diner, and we get the first hint of her tragic past in the episode's script:
As Annie serves his coffee, her longsleeved shirt rides up far enough for Cooper to spot the beginning of extensive wrist scars. He knows what they mean.
Like Cooper, Annie has been scarred by some past love affair which ended badly; like him, she possesses an eye for detail and an affinity with nature which makes her able to identify both a bird (chickadee) and the car it has landed upon (a Dodge Dart) just by a brief glance out the diner's window--tellingly, this just serves to confirm Cooper's original identification. During their first few meetings, Cooper and Annie engage in extremely contrived chatter which hits a sour note compared to the fine writing elsewhere in the show:
COOPER
It's all new to you. Everything.
ANNIE
I feel constantly amazed ... stunned. Music, people.
The way they laugh and talk. Some of them so clearly
in love. It's like a foreign language to me. I know just
enough of the words to realize how little I understand.
COOPER
I'd like to see the world through your eyes.
Despite this awkward banter, Cooper falls in love with Annie. He describes her in episode 28's tape recording to the unseen Diane as "a completely original human being," which is absurd considering that there is nothing original about Annie; she is merely a satellite who reflects Cooper's own light. Cooper further describes Annie as having "responses as pure as a child's," which is perhaps more to the point. Unlike Audrey, who offered Cooper a challenging sensuality, Annie is shown as childlike, docile and compliant and is content to allow him to set the pace of their relationship; after her long stay in the convent, she is unsure of how to interact with other human beings. Cooper's and Annie's lovemaking is as straightforward and unemotional (Annie describes herself beforehand as "eager...and full of grace") as Audrey and Wheeler's hasty tryst aboard his jet is exciting and passionate.
Unlike every other character in Twin Peaks, neither John Justice Wheeler nor Annie Blackburne reveals their dark side, the "shadow self" which completes them, during their appearances in the show. Wheeler is only portrayed as honorable and altruistic, seeking Ben's blessing to pursue Audrey, then becoming obligated to leave in order to fulfill a promise to a dead friend; Annie is defined only by her purity, refusing even to acknowledge the dark past to which her self-mutilation hints. It might be argued that these characters could not be fully fleshed out because of the need to bring the show to a close after its cancellation; however, this begs the question of why they had to be introduced at all. No storyline, save that of discovering the murderer of Laura Palmer, was truly brought to conclusion in the short run of the show, so there seems no pressing need to tie up the romantic loose ends of Audrey's and Cooper's punctured romance.
In addition, there was the possibility of a much more likely and suitable match for Audrey in Bobby Briggs, with whom she flirts while he attempts to land a position with her father. Had the show continued, it would have been only natural for Audrey and Bobby to work together to improve the flagging Horne businesses, which could have led to a romance in a more organic fashion and would have been much closer to bringing about the possible future Major Briggs saw for his son in a dream. This would also have left Shelly free to be pursued by Gordon Cole following the almost-guaranteed death of Leo at the hands of Windom Earle. As it stands, though, the Sues brought in at the last minute to provide quick matches for two of the most vital and interesting characters in Twin Peaks strike a most unlovely chord and lead us to question the judgment of not only the characters, but the writers who brought them into being.
I recently got into Twin Peaks thanks to my husband, an old-school fan who held on to his beloved VHS tapes and parted with them only reluctantly when DVDs became available. I am currently watching the series through for the second time and mostly love it, but there's just something about the last few episodes that makes me a cranky fangirl. I really hate how the romantic loose ends resulting from Agent Dale Cooper's refusing Audrey Horne's advances were tied up by the quick introduction of the characters Annie Blackburne and John Justice Wheeler; the undeniable chemistry between Cooper and Audrey made the new pairings seem rushed and heavy-handed, and it didn't help that the new characters were canon Sues designed to be their perfect mates.
It's alleged that Cooper and Audrey were initially intended to become romantically involved, but that Kyle MacLachlan, who played Cooper, insisted that Cooper would never consider romance with a teenage girl. Even so, Audrey's relentless pursuit of Cooper and his daring rescue of Audrey from One-Eyed Jack's left little wiggle room to redefine their relationship. Enter adventurer and self-made millionaire John Justice Wheeler, who has admired Audrey since she was a child and is a former beneficiary of a timely investment by her father Ben. Wheeler's status as a Relationship Sue is established from his first meeting with Audrey, as detailed in the shooting script for episode 23:
Audrey finally looks up, right into the smoldering eyes of JOHN JUSTICE WHEELER - full on knock-down-drag-out handsome. Wheeler meets her glare with a friendly smile. Simple, uncomplicated.
Wheeler has come to town to repay his long-ago debt to Ben Horne by helping Ben with his faltering business ventures and his attempt to halt the Ghostwood country club development deal, which allows for another reveal of his too-good-to-be-true personality:
AUDREY (suspicious)
What exactly do you do, Mr. Wheeler?
WHEELER
Call me Jack. I buy bankrupt, failing businesses
streamline them, bring them up to speed, and then,
usually, sell them.
BEN
And at a substantial profit. But not, I should add, before
making significant environmental concessions. When
Jack's finished, the waste is re-routed, the air cleaner, the
people happier.
WHEELER (modest to a fault)
You make me sound like Santa Claus. I'm a businessman,
that's all.
Wheeler is a lonely teenage girl's dream come true: independently wealthy, a world traveler, and a good singer to boot, who serenades Audrey with cowboy songs during a hastily improvised picnic and just happens to be around to literally sweep her off her feet as she falls off the stage at a fashion show.
During the same episode in which John Justice Wheeler is introduced, we hear about the impending arrival of Annie Blackburne, the never-before-mentioned, much younger sister of Norma Jennings. Annie has decided to leave a convent, and Norma muses to her friend and co-worker Shelly about Annie, a good old-fashioned Purity Sue: "When she was little I always thought Annie was from another time and place." What better match could there be for the sensitive, otherworldly Dale Cooper?
Annie first meets Cooper in episode 24 when she serves him at Norma's diner, and we get the first hint of her tragic past in the episode's script:
As Annie serves his coffee, her longsleeved shirt rides up far enough for Cooper to spot the beginning of extensive wrist scars. He knows what they mean.
Like Cooper, Annie has been scarred by some past love affair which ended badly; like him, she possesses an eye for detail and an affinity with nature which makes her able to identify both a bird (chickadee) and the car it has landed upon (a Dodge Dart) just by a brief glance out the diner's window--tellingly, this just serves to confirm Cooper's original identification. During their first few meetings, Cooper and Annie engage in extremely contrived chatter which hits a sour note compared to the fine writing elsewhere in the show:
COOPER
It's all new to you. Everything.
ANNIE
I feel constantly amazed ... stunned. Music, people.
The way they laugh and talk. Some of them so clearly
in love. It's like a foreign language to me. I know just
enough of the words to realize how little I understand.
COOPER
I'd like to see the world through your eyes.
Despite this awkward banter, Cooper falls in love with Annie. He describes her in episode 28's tape recording to the unseen Diane as "a completely original human being," which is absurd considering that there is nothing original about Annie; she is merely a satellite who reflects Cooper's own light. Cooper further describes Annie as having "responses as pure as a child's," which is perhaps more to the point. Unlike Audrey, who offered Cooper a challenging sensuality, Annie is shown as childlike, docile and compliant and is content to allow him to set the pace of their relationship; after her long stay in the convent, she is unsure of how to interact with other human beings. Cooper's and Annie's lovemaking is as straightforward and unemotional (Annie describes herself beforehand as "eager...and full of grace") as Audrey and Wheeler's hasty tryst aboard his jet is exciting and passionate.
Unlike every other character in Twin Peaks, neither John Justice Wheeler nor Annie Blackburne reveals their dark side, the "shadow self" which completes them, during their appearances in the show. Wheeler is only portrayed as honorable and altruistic, seeking Ben's blessing to pursue Audrey, then becoming obligated to leave in order to fulfill a promise to a dead friend; Annie is defined only by her purity, refusing even to acknowledge the dark past to which her self-mutilation hints. It might be argued that these characters could not be fully fleshed out because of the need to bring the show to a close after its cancellation; however, this begs the question of why they had to be introduced at all. No storyline, save that of discovering the murderer of Laura Palmer, was truly brought to conclusion in the short run of the show, so there seems no pressing need to tie up the romantic loose ends of Audrey's and Cooper's punctured romance.
In addition, there was the possibility of a much more likely and suitable match for Audrey in Bobby Briggs, with whom she flirts while he attempts to land a position with her father. Had the show continued, it would have been only natural for Audrey and Bobby to work together to improve the flagging Horne businesses, which could have led to a romance in a more organic fashion and would have been much closer to bringing about the possible future Major Briggs saw for his son in a dream. This would also have left Shelly free to be pursued by Gordon Cole following the almost-guaranteed death of Leo at the hands of Windom Earle. As it stands, though, the Sues brought in at the last minute to provide quick matches for two of the most vital and interesting characters in Twin Peaks strike a most unlovely chord and lead us to question the judgment of not only the characters, but the writers who brought them into being.