The Demise of Josie Packard

I'm getting into the final episodes of season two in my latest Twin Peaks re-watch. Gordon Cole, the FBI chief played by David Lynch, has returned which I think also signalled a return of David Lynch's creative presence, though he wouldn't direct another episode until the final episode of the season.

This also follows from the death of Josie Packard, a mysterious character whom one assumes has importance to the series as a whole because she's the first character we see in the first interior shot after the opening credits in the first episode. She's gazing into a mirror wistfully. The common interpretation of this scene is that it's an introduction of the show's preoccupation with doubles, with people who have split personalities, multiple personae. After Josie's death, Harry, who was in love with Josie, has a conversation with Catherine in an episode co-written by series co-creator Mark Frost. I feel like Catherine's analysis of Josie may be close to the concept Lynch and Frost discussed for her when originally creating her character.

HARRY: What made her do the things she did? What was she after?

CATHERINE: I've been asking myself a lot of the same things.

HARRY: Catherine. I need to understand.

CATHERINE: Well, I think that, early in her life, she must have learned a lesson that she could survive by being what other people wanted to see, by showing them that. Whatever was left of her private self she may never have shown to anyone.

HARRY: So all the stories, the lies were--

CATHERINE: Well, who knows. They may not have seemed untrue to her. What she needed to believe was always shifting to suit the moment. In spite of all the things she tried to do to me and my family I find it curiously hard to hate her for it.

That certainly fits with the character we saw throughout the series and with actress Joan Chen's performance. I feel like every time she asked Lynch or Frost for her motivation for any given scene she must have been told, "She's afraid." Almost every scene of dialogue she had after answering questions about Laura was her pleading with someone. It makes sense that the demoniac character of Bob appears to drag her into the underworld. Yet at the same time her compulsive duplicity gives her a strange form of innocence, maybe the innocence of a shark who doesn't stop to wonder why she can't stop swimming.