13
Guaranteed to Cause Some Sleepless Nights

Dossiers: Persons of Interest

Hank Jennings (Chris Mulkey)

A very busy bee in Twin Peaks’ criminal underworld, Hank Jennings drives a lot of action in the series’ plot. Hank is married to Norma, the long-suffering owner of the Double R, and his release from prison early in the series presents a major roadblock for her romance with Big Ed. Less prosaically, it was Hank who engineered the murder attempt on Andrew Packard, and Hank who shot Leo . . . in another unsuccessful assassination gambit. Some fans postulate that the domino Hank carries around and fetishistically gloats over represents the number of people he’s killed, but in terms of in-series murder attempts, he’s batting zilch. Mulkey deftly conveys both Hank’s sullen menace and easy charm; it’s understandable that level-headed Norma might once have fallen for him, and, indeed, Truman reveals that Hank was once a Bookhouse Boy, and “one of the best.” Hank is one Twin Peaks villain who seems not so much truly evil as he does humanly weak and selfish. Still, he’s a jerk, and one of the show’s most deliciously satisfying moments is the beating administered to him by the supernaturally strong Nadine Hurley.

Chris Mulkey as rogue Bookhouse Boy/domino kid Hank Jennings.

Leo Johnson (Eric Da Re)

Leo’s trajectory over the course of the series is intriguing: he begins as an utterly hateful, degenerate, abusive bastard and ends up a pitiable Job figure—it’s as if the character is an experiment designed to elicit sympathy from the unlikeliest source possible. Da Re (son of TP casting director Johanna Ray and veteran character actor Aldo Ray) vividly conveys the simmering rage just below Leo’s cool, detached affect; he’s one of the show’s most chilling non-supernatural antagonists, a blandly handsome “regular guy” who insists on cleanliness and order when not otherwise engaged in various acts of sickening depravity or cold-blooded violence. Leo’s a key player in Twin Peaks’ drug trade, his truck-driving job a perfect cover for bringing cocaine in over the Canadian border. He is also a former sexual partner of Laura Palmer’s, and indeed was engaged in a debauched orgy with her, Ronette Pulaski, and Jacques Renault (shudder) the night she died. The likeliest-looking suspect in Laura’s murder, Leo certainly fits the bill of a sadistic killer: he tortured Laura in the course of their last encounter, physically and psychologically abuses his young wife Shelly, burns down the Packard mill with Catherine Martell and Shelly inside, and, perhaps most heinously, guns down Waldo the mynah bird in cold blood. He also attacks Bobby Briggs with an axe, but the kid arguably had it coming. Leo’s fortunes take an abrupt plunge after he is shot in the head by Hank Jennings (tying up some pesky loose ends regarding that arson). Reduced to a conscious but semi-vegetative state, he is left in the care of Shelly . . . and Bobby, now openly flaunting their passion before the wheelchair-bound Leo’s helpless eyes. Leo is repeatedly humiliated and abused by the couple, and it’s hard to say he doesn’t deserve it, but it’s uncomfortable to watch nonetheless. Eventually escaping this domestic hell, he immediately lands in a worse one, conscripted by the demented Windom Earle to be his dogsbody and whipping boy, controlled by a shock collar. The last we see of him, Leo sits helplessly in the woods, unable to move or open his mouth lest he activate a cruel trap devised by Earle involving a great number of poisonous spiders suspended above his face. Justice served?

Bad, bad Leo Johnson: Meanest man in the whole damn town?

Blackie O’Reilly (Victoria Catlin)

Elegant, imperious, and perfectly discreet, One Eyed Jacks madam Blackie O’Reilly (also known as “The Black Rose”) rules her roost with sultry noirish élan. A former lover of Benjamin Horne, Blackie operates his brothel/casino and resents the hold he has over her; understandable, since his control is based on the heroin addiction he manipulated her into. She takes sadistic pleasure in returning the favor when Horne’s daughter Audrey infiltrates the bordello, keeping the girl captive and forcibly injecting her with the opiate. Do things work out for Blackie? No, no they do not, as she is murdered by Jean Renault (at the behest of her own sister, ouch) after assisting him in the hostile takeover of OEJ. She’s a bad egg, but she has style, and her arch flirting with Big Ed Hurley on the occasion of his undercover mission to the casino cracks us up every time.

Nancy O’Reilly (Galyn Görg)

Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man: Nancy is the sister of One Eyed Jacks boss lady Blackie O’Reilly, but let’s just say there isn’t a ton of sisterly love going around here. The reasons aren’t fully explicated, though at least part of it has to do with Nancy’s miscreant boyfriend Jean Renault, apparently Blackie’s onetime squeeze (“What does she do for you I can’t?” Blackie wants to know. “Well, something new,” replies Renault, who nearly gets a shot glass of whiskey tossed in his face for that retort). Just how rancorous is their relationship? Well, very: Nancy urges Jean to kill her sister, and he eventually obliges. When last seen, Nancy is taking a nasty punch to the gut from Cooper; not very chivalrous, true, but after all, she is trying to kill him.

Renault Brothers (Jacques, Bernard, Jean) (Walter Olkewicz, Clay Wilcox, Michael Parks)

A singularly scummy fraternity, the Brothers Renault constitute some of Twin Peaks’ most loathsome characters. Most crucial to the Laura Palmer arc is middle sibling Jacques (the self-proclaimed “Great Went”): a blackjack dealer, bartender, cocaine runner, and general reprobate who was (along with good buddy and partner in crime Leo Johnson) intimately and sickeningly involved with Laura Palmer (he both “partied” with her and pimped her out). Grossly overweight, slovenly and lecherous, and, in his own words, “blank as a fart,” Jacques does manage a certain low, roguish charm—he’s crudely entertaining, even after he takes a cowardly shot at Harry. Predictably, he comes to a bad end, smothered to death in the hospital by Leland Palmer after his (erroneous) arrest for Laura’s murder.

Little brother Bernard mules dope from Canada for Jacques. He’s a rather pathetic, weaselly figure, dispassionately disposed of by business partner Leo Johnson in the woods after getting picked up holding cocaine at the border by the law. Tidy Leo, always on the lookout for loose ends.

Oldest, and worst, brother Jean, played by legendary character actor and Tarantino favorite Michael Parks, presents himself as soft-spoken, elegant, and sophisticated, in contrast to his coarser siblings. This veneer hides pure ruthless avarice. A career criminal, Jean angles to take control of One Eyed Jacks, murdering the madam, Blackie (the creep is the lover of Nancy, Blackie’s sister), and spearheads the scheme to ransom Audrey Horne back to her father, Benjamin, owner of the casino and brothel. Jean also plots revenge against Cooper, whom he blames for the deaths of his brothers (no great loss), and frames him for drug running, resulting in Coop’s temporary suspension from the FBI. He’s a vicious, hateful man, actively evil and sadistic (contrasted with Jacques’s largely self-destructive sins of sloth, lust, self-indulgence, and moral weakness), and his death at Cooper’s hands at Dead Dog Farm inspires no tears.