The last time we saw then seventeen-year-olds James (Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Jessica Barden), things had taken more than just a slight turn for the worse, with James ending up seemingly mortally wounded by the end of their gamble on running away from their old lives together. With James seeing himself as a bona fide sociopath incapable of feeling (in season two, it is instead Alyssa who will say, “I don’t really feel anything anymore. It’s good, not feeling. It’s like a superpower.”), Alyssa’s sudden appearance in his life as a foul-mouthed rebel seeking to escape just as much as he wants to kill her to prove to himself he’s a sociopath does somewhat complicate his whole lone wolf shtick. Of course, he does end up killing someone, in defense of Alyssa: Dr. Clive Koch (Jonathan Aris). His murder being the hovering stain above season two (sounds like the same hovering Laura Palmer does as well, no?).
Two years on, The End of the Fucking World (based on Charles Forsman’s mini comics) commences its narrative with Bonnie (Naomi Ackie), recently released from prison and out to avenge the death of Clive, who she genuinely believed loved her due to her own hate-ridden family situation (as Alyssa phrases it, “The problem with a person having a lack of love is that they don’t know what it looks like. So it’s easy for them to get tricked, to see things that aren’t there.”). It is as she rolls up to the convenience store to the tune of Nancy Wilson’s “How Glad I Am (You Don’t Know)” in episode one that we realize she’s a bit “off.” This made all the more apparent when she tells the cashier–someone she went to high school with–that she went to prison for killing someone and that she’s off to do the same again. He shrugs it off by telling her that she always had an odd sense of humor, but Bonnie’s derangement is no joke. And like all things, it began with lovelessness and intense pressures at home. Thus, her confusion on what love is as evidenced by her spinning the yarn, “I learned about punishment from a young age. I learned it happens because of love.” But of course she would think that when her mother was determined to make her the educated brainiac she could never be, quizzing her on world capitals and then cutting off the head of her favorite stuffed animal if she got one wrong. With this macabre childhood background told as The Vogues’ “My Special Angel” plays, there is more than a mere hint of irony as its intended placeholder for what an affectionate household was supposed to feel like. Indeed, this method of sentimental 60s music set to scenes of underlying sinisterness is at the core of the David Lynch method. And sinister it continues to get as Bonnie’s mom tells her to eat the lipstick she found among her things, informing her such accoutrements are for hookers, not women who pass their exams. So yes, it’s no wonder fellow freak Dr. Koch starts taking a keen notice of her weirdness whilst she poses as a student in his college philosophy class (for, much to her mother’s dismay, she failed her final exams in high school, meaning she simply works at the university’s library).
Ignoring all the obvious signs that he’s using her for no frills sex–treating her very much like the whore her mother warned her she would become as he gives her cash after every “session” for a taxi–Bonnie imagines the link between them is authentic, especially when Clive tells her things like, “You’re my little salmon” with reference to her swimming against the stream of everyone else. That certainly cinches the deal on her killing a girl he insists is falsely accusing him of assault. Love is not a straight line–unless it’s the one that leads your car straight into the back of your running target. If it suddenly feels like Alyssa and James’ narrative has gotten lost, fret not. Alyssa is at the forefront as she prepares for her wedding to Todd (Josh Dylan), a customer from the diner/cafe she works at. Channeling her moodiest version of Shelly Johnson (Mädchen Amick), she’s a surprisingly dedicated employee. Perhaps owing to the fact that her mother’s half-sister is the owner. Or maybe, like getting married young, being a good worker is the most “renegade” thing you can do nowadays. As for Todd, blonde and toned–the exact opposite of James–he’s adequate enough for a husband, Alyssa reckons. Plus, when she told him the whole story of what happened to her when she was seventeen, he didn’t run for the hills.
Alas, the appearance of James, who has been stalking her–or “watching” her as the audience tends to think it’s Bonnie spying on her prey–outside the cafe the night before her wedding puts something of a damper on her plans. Still, this is not going to be some The Graduate moment. At least not entirely–for Alyssa goes through with the wedding and then runs off to find James before he drives away with his newly placed wheel (ruined from the previous evening when he tried to flee from Alyssa without being seen). It is now that their adventure can begin, one that both are clearly trying to re-create as a means to feel even remotely as alive as they did that first time on the road together (as wild and free–or at least trying to be–as James Hurley [James Marshall] on his motorcycle). For, truth be told, Alyssa only really wanted to get married so that she could feel different. Turns out, she feels the same: nothing.
With Clive’s murder looming above all three of them with a similar pall to Laura Palmer’s, it’s only fitting that they should all end up in the same car, with Bonnie pretending to be a hitchhiker. The trio ends up having to stop at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, one very much in the aesthetic vein of The Great Northern, owned by Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) in Twin Peaks. Antlers and all. And as we are taken to the denouement of the grand buildup to what Bonnie has been plotting for Alyssa and James for the past six episodes (everything comes to a head in the penultimate one, episode seven), it is the look of The Bang Bang Bar’s signature neon sign in the Twin Peaks reboot that lends the escalation to the climax most of its ominousness and drama. That stark and bright neon against a pitch black wilderness having Lynch written all over it. Along with the cafe’s interior and Alyssa’s sexless uniform as she offers Bonnie a scone. At the heart of it all, a fraught romance between two star-crossed lovers.
And finally, for the pièce de résistance, Graham Coxon serves as the Angelo Badalamenti figure, with his continued original compositions for the show that also appeared in season one. Oh yeah, and let us not forget James carrying around his dad’s urn like the Log Lady with her log. The question now is, will The End of the Fucking World suffer the same fate as Twin Peaks in terms of stalling at two seasons?
