Joe McCluskey - I respectfully disagree with the entirety of your post... which shall not come as a surprise
Let me start from here:
Hawk & Bobby are nowhere to be found when Evil Cooper shows up.
My impression is that you still see this movie as if divided in compartments, with the strings that should get all together at the end in one big fight. The reason why Hawk and Bobby do not appear is that their purpose is over.
Hawk - Initiates the investigation by believing a lady that talks to a log and finding some “procedural” evidence.
Bobby - keeps up the investigation by revealing fundamental clues
Andy - is the one that really understands the purpose and gets green glove free
Sheriff Truman - is the one that causes the “big reveal” (he also functions as an information dump device, obviously).
Lucy - she’s the one that kills Mr.C.
They worked as a team by cooperating, sharing information, going to places, and accepting a strange reality.
Joe McCluskey wrote:[
There were several scenes where it was reiterated to the Sheriff’s Dep. that there are two Coopers, yet they do nothing with that information. When Evil Cooper shows up, they don’t question if its the real Cooper that they’re welcoming to Truman’s office for a one-on-one chat? If not, what was the purpose of them discovering clues about the duality of Cooper? Again, the only reason they realize Evil Cooper was a phony was because Good Cooper called them, thus they knew that something was wrong, and even then, only Lucy had the idea to take action. Also, Good Cooper didn’t even know that Evil Cooper was at the station, so he wasn’t in on this supposed elaborate plan to call at that very moment.
The reasons is that characters don’t have the same information that we, the viewers, have. Not even Andy. They don’t know how badCooper looks, they don’t know where he’s headed, and they don’t know anything extraordinary. They knew that something was happening, and they knew that there were two Coopers (still a difficult thing to believe, wouldn’t you agree?). We have seen two Coopers for 16 hours. They didn’t. I also disagree that there was no suspicion...
Again, Andy does nothing with his acquired knowledge. In fact, he actions contradict the knowledge he gains—e.g., welcoming Evil Cooper to the station without reservation despite knowing that there’s two Coopers, putting Freddie behind bars, etc.
Andy’s behavior is strange when he sees Mr.C. He clearly invites Mr. C, but he doesn’t look 100% convinced that he is in front of Cooper. Andy isn’t the brightest cop on earth, yet a single sentence (no coffee) convinces him that he is in front of bad Cooper. To me that shows that - although uncertain - he did not fall for Mr.C’s trick. They are all suspicious about Mr. C, and the “we were just talking about you” sentence, which is said multiple times, leads me to believe that there was some sense of general knowledge.
In general, I am not sure that Andy remembered what happened in the Lodge (and here I agree with you that they should’ve made it more clear). They ALL forget what happens near a vortex; my feeling is that Andy has a subconscious memory of what he saw, but he is not actively aware of it.
You also have to compare the TP investigation with the Fuscos. Look at them. They are in an important city (as it was seen last week, sadly) with a fairly large PD. As TP Sheriff Dept they also have to deal with corruption. And as Andy they get their information dump after an investigation, which feels unrealistic to them. What happens? They throw it in the trash. While I enjoyed the meta level of the scene, it is by far in sharp contrast with Twin Peaks and its attitude.
Yes, the guy who was shot twice in less than a week, was arrested, unknowingly worked with an FBI informant, surrounds himself with incompetent criminals who are either killed or arrested, and who walked into a Sheriff’s station expecting to find some great evil entity was not dumb at all.
Again, you leave outside relevant parts of the story. Mr. C is the same guy that was on earth 25 years, tricking everyone, killing, becoming a billionaire, creating strange glass boxes in Manhattan (I wonder how he got the permit!), tricks Cooper, tricks Dougie, etc. When we see Mr. C he is at his weakest point. He threw up garmonbonzia, he can’t talk normally for a while, and the Lodge is clearly reclaiming him.
Suppose they did have information that Evil Cooper was arriving. They could just have their guns drawn and detain/shoot him until Cooper arrived with the ring. They wouldn’t have to worry about acting differently in front of him.
They had no information that Evil Cooper was arriving, and especially when. They had clues, but you’re seriously asking Andy, Bobby, Truman, Hawk, and Chad to be ready, 24/7, with weapons drawn? That’s for action movies.
I must ask again. You lament the futility of Twin Peaks Sheriff Dept. What was its purpose in S1 and S2 other than guiding Cooper around town?
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