Twin Peaks - Bobby



Let’s just be honest, horrible things happen to people in the Lynch/Frost Twin Peaks from the 1990-91 show and the 1993 Fire Walk with me, to the recent incarnation of the show in its third season of 2017. I had plans to write a piece after watching the first season’s fourth and fifth episodes on Bobby Briggs but was waiting for something specific—a particular from the 2017 season in regards to his “life’s turnaround”—and, sure enough, Episode 9 gave it to me. It was exactly what I was waiting for. Lynch has a world that is rotten, decaying, ugly, and violent. But if anything he gives us Bobby’s redemption. Bobby is a malcontent in the early stages of his character’s introduction to us in the first season (and pilot) of Twin Peaks. Loud, abrasive, explosive, unruly, unstable, and seemingly deeply entrenched in a world of dope activity; Bobby Briggs wasn’t exactly modeling his own life even remotely close to his military father’s, more relaxed, intellectual, patient, and intuitive personality. Two ends of a coin, Bobby and his father, Major Garland Briggs (Don S Davis), couldn’t be any different. 



But Garland never gave up on his son, trying instead to reason with him and remain a calm voice opposite this volcanic and enraged spirit. I admit that I could prescribe in my reviews to the theorizing on Lynch’s otherworldly (and I think quite incredible) subplots which jump all over the place (that Episode 8 blew me away but I wouldn’t even begin to try and describe it…no way), but I’m attracted to characters as much as Lynch and Frost’s “other world” trips they allow us to take with them. Seeing Bobby explode at Laura’s funeral after Garland “suggested” he keep his tone down, as James arrived to pay his respects and voraciously condemn those in attendance for their “hypocrisy”, and then in Episode 9 granted a mother’s pride and allowed to feel a peace in his soul that his father didn’t quit on him is quite a development I certainly appreciate. This revival is completely Lynch and Frost’s opportunity to conclude or at least provide closure for characters the 90/91 season left open for us to ponder. Where would Bobby’s life’s path tread? Does he continue down the road oft-traveled leading to his demise? In Episode 9, Bobby—weathered and wiser—takes Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster) and Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) to his mother’s where they are told by her that Garland had anticipated this particular visit, providing them with this hidden tube containing a message with a date, place, and name (Cooper/Cooper). Bobby is responsible for Truman and Hawk’s opening the tube, remembering a trick his father taught him when he was younger. And the place of the message, a fantasy shared between father and son in the woods, Bobby will take Truman and Hawk. When we last see Bobby in Episode 5 of the first season, he’s escaping from a window as the police (and Agent Cooper) arrive to Jacques’ place, having attempted to frame Leo through the planting of a bloodied shirt handed over to him by lover, Shelly (Mädchen Amick). It is so interesting to see Bobby as he was in the first season and where he is now in the 2017 season. Seemingly headed for turbulent waters that might drown him and now in steady, calmer waters helping others. Quite a contrast.
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I quite agree with those who consider the older Bobby seeing Laura's picture in the sheriff department meeting room on the table and his emotional reaction will be (and should, I think quite frankly) remembered as one of the 2017's best. Ashbrook let's it all come rushing back, like a tide. Great moment he was afforded.

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