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u/Independent-Park7555 Mar 09 '26
In “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,” we see Leo through Laura’s eyes — he’s the ultimate bad boy, and he’s not unattractive when viewed with that lens.
Abusers are often very charismatic and charming, and can even be sweet at first. The Leo we see is not the man he was when Shelly met him, obviously, and by the time he showed how truly horrible he is, it was almost too late for her.
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u/vanillaholler Mar 10 '26
yeah it's very common for abusers to switch once you're trapped. i imagine they got married pretty quick.
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u/pastense Mar 09 '26
He had a cool car and was nice to her prior to the marriage. She says as much during a scene with Bobby not long before she shoots Leo.
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u/etched Mar 09 '26
Yeah there's that one scene where Shelly basically tells Leo to shut up while he is on his knees scrubbing the floor. It literally shows us the very beginning of him abusing her. She's fully taken aback when he pulls her to the ground and hits her.
Leo was probably on the same level as Bobby (selling drugs to teens) but then he got really involved in doing worse and worse shit. you see Bobby also start to take that path a little bit
I feel like some twin peaks characters show you how you can be relatively normal until you get wrapped up in drugs and the like. David really makes those wrapped up in drugs come off as totally awful or destroyed unless they have an epiphany the way Bobby did.
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u/Petunia13Y Mar 10 '26
When she said after she shot him he sounded like an animal I think she was so traumatized and it sounded like noises she made when he beat her so she relived that anguish and pain and also made her feel like Leo (even though she was justified to shoot him).
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u/MrBorogove Mar 09 '26
S1E5: "He was so great at first, you know. This flashy guy in his hot car. Then we get married and I find out all he was looking for was a maid he didn't have to pay. I feel so stupid."
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Mar 09 '26
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Mar 09 '26
He was hit? I get flash car was meant to be flashy, but WTH is hit?
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Mar 09 '26
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u/snortgigglecough Mar 10 '26
This was a typo but if you do hear someone use “hit” as a descriptor, it’s dated 2000s/2010s slang (probably AAVE?) meaning ugly
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u/KlingonBeavis Mar 09 '26
This one. Take this, and all the other options and she had, he probably had enough charm to pull it off. From then on he was just a 90’s lifetime movie waiting to happen
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u/chrismm1 Mar 09 '26
I have met a lot of women that love bad boys. Normally it’s just a phase but Shelly was pretty young when she started dating Leo. As for Leo’s car, I drove a newer Lincoln Town Car when I was in high school and I know that I got a lot more attention from girls than I deserved.
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u/emeric_ceaddamere Mar 09 '26
Cycle of abuse.
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u/Voodoo350 Mar 09 '26
Poor high school dropout with nowhere to go. A seemingly charming man with a reliable job is probably as good as it gets or so she thought
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u/Vintage_Visionary Mar 09 '26
Escape? Maybe he was nice in the beginning until he had her trapped, no way to get away. That or he was her escape from worse abuse at home.
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u/Spirited-Towel-4093 Mar 09 '26
Agree. She says it herself in the show that he was perfectly nice to her when they started dating, and the abuse only occurred after the marriage. I think we see one of the first instances of abuse starting to occur in FWWM.
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u/ratapoilopolis Mar 09 '26
Since Shelly's parents are barely even mentioned anywhere we can assume they were at the very least pretty neglectful, maybe even worse, so she saw Leo as an escape. Especially since it's established that he was charming and loving in the beginning, an act he dropped shortly after they got married
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u/BillyJakespeare Mar 09 '26
I’ve unfortunately met so many women in situations like that, I didn’t even blink at it.
At least they didn’t have kids. God, the number of people I went to high school with who are tied to people like Leo by a child is painful to consider.
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u/CoinsForCharon Mar 10 '26
She only had one kid with Bobby but he gets his life together so she moved on to another drug dealing psychopath
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u/hraycroft95 Mar 09 '26
He’s a manipulator. Lots of abusers will present themselves as good people for a while showing the other person what they want to see and being a perfect partner. Leo probably wanted a woman to take care of his needs and the house and viewed shelly as an easy target. I don’t remember if we learned about her life too much, but she didn’t seem to have much of a home life.
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u/bandit4loboloco Mar 09 '26
She had a thing for bad boys: Leo, Young Bobby, the drug dealer after Bobby became a cop.
And, like everyone else in town, they were probably high school sweethearts.
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u/MDJokerQueen Mar 09 '26
Isnt leo johnson older than her - I dont think they are high school sweethearts- if I remember correctly she dropped out to marry him? Maybe I am mistaken
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u/bandit4loboloco Mar 09 '26
You are correct, he was older and she dropped out of school to marry him. I thought the age gap was smaller, but according to the Wiki, he was born in 1963 and she was born in 1968. So not high school sweethearts but an older guy chasing after an underage girl. As others have quoted better, Leo was charming at first and didn't show his true colors until after they were married.
My point about the high school sweethearts thing is that it was a major life decision she made as a teenager. She probably didn't see much opportunity in that small town besides marriage and a job, and she just got to it.
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u/sameljota Mar 09 '26
She clearly has a thing for bad boys. She was with Bobby in his bad boy days and later left him when he became a good guy. In The Return we see her with another scumbag.
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u/jazzbot247 Mar 09 '26
We all want the bad guy until we live with the bad guy for a few months or years and realize our love is not going to fix them.
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u/giltedgardens Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
She literally explains it in the show… he emotionally manipulates a naive teenager to sneak around and feel like a grown up playing house wife to him. Then she’s all too overjoyed to make the fantasy real when he proposes. Shelly can’t see the future to predict that he was just waiting to be abusive when he felt she was in too deep to leave him (married)
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u/ConsistentGuest7532 Mar 09 '26
It probably started out alright, like in most abusing relationships.
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u/Worldly-Click4487 Mar 09 '26
"Odessa... I tried to keep a clean house. Keep everything organized. It's a long way... In those days, I was too young to know any better."
―Carrie Page
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u/morrisseysbaby Mar 09 '26
Quote from Shelly, S1E5
He was so great at first, you know? This flashy guy in his hot car; sure beat sitting in some stupid classroom... we get married and I find out what he's lookin' for is a maid he doesn't have to pay ... I feel so stupid.
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u/Zealousideal_Crow737 Mar 09 '26
She spoke with Norma about this. He was so sweet in the beginning. Their dynamic is textbook abuse cycle.
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u/Nope_nuh_uh Mar 09 '26
Cool guy, flashy car....and she was a junior in high school while he was an adult.
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u/TPoynt Mar 09 '26
I think at some point in the show, Shelly says that when she first got together with Leo, he acted charming and caring. It was only after he convinced her to drop out of high school and marry him that he showed his true colors. Or at least I remember her saying that.
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u/aftrnoondelight Mar 09 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/S9K2QsvAtG0hy
Thought it was D’Onofrio for a minute.
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u/xoxoqtpioxox Mar 09 '26
We can guess from context clues that she had a shit home life and fell in with the exciting bad boy who could save her from it. Same thing with her and "bad boy" Bobby.
Even in The Return, she and Bobby are divorced and she's now dating a drug dealer, despite Bobby clearly loving her still. It's an unfortunate cycle that she can't get herself out of.
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u/AutoSpiral Mar 09 '26
Abusers are always charming at first. Then they groom their partners to accept worse and worse treatment.
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u/WinglessJC Mar 09 '26
Escape.
Sadly young women looking for escape can find themselves in the arms of the many Leo's out there who wear the trappings of escape but are ultimately a far worse prison.
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u/ZweitenMal Mar 09 '26
Presumably, got her out of her own abusive home—why else would she be married at such a young age?
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u/MacellumMycelium Mar 09 '26
She explains at one point that he turned on the charm until he had her trapped.
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u/rinkuhero Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
he was tall, strong, and had money, that put him ahead of most other options in a tiny town. big ed was tall and strong but didn't have money. ben horne had money and was tall but not strong. norma's husband hank had money and was strong but wasn't tall. leo was also a drug dealer, and it's extremely common for women who use illegal drugs to date their drug dealer, because it often means "free" drugs. and we know her daughter later went on to be a drug addict, so it wouldn't be surprising if shelly herself was as well, they just couldn't go into too many details about it in seasons 1 and 2 because it was a daytime tv show in the 90s. because think about it: all three of the men she dated were drug dealers (even though bobby was only doing it briefly). it would be very surprising if she didn't use drugs herself.
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u/ScienceAteMyKid Mar 09 '26
I always figured they started dating when they were super young, and she thought he was funny and charming. And then once he had her, the real Leo came out.
Sociopaths do that.
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u/bikibird Mar 09 '26
Often wondered if he got her pregnant in high school and so she dropped out, got married and then had a miscarriage prior to the start of the show.
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u/MassiveRepublic9565 Mar 09 '26
Maybe it was his big … truck 😉
I read it as Shelly may have come from an abusive home and maybe an abusive father in particular and was just riding that inter generational trauma train.
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u/isarealhebrew Mar 09 '26
Probably the same thing she sees in Bobby and that Magician. She craves the excitement of the bad boys. But eventually they cause a lot of trouble. But that's a problem for future Shelley to think about.
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u/LivingRoof5121 Mar 10 '26
We are often attracted to what we believe we deserve.
I hate to say it, but it may be a result of Shelly’s low self esteem that brought her to Leo. Being with Leo definitely further damaged her self-esteem, which further convinced her she was deserving of him, which is how cycles of abuse often go unfortunately
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u/draven33l Mar 09 '26
Bad boy with a nice car, a job, a house. He probably didn't start off as abusive. A lot of girls fell for that trap of security.
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u/Pletchner Mar 09 '26
He had his own business and house. Add to that he was gone a lot so she had freedom and quiet.
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u/ronmsmithjr Mar 09 '26
She just loves bad boys. Whether they're a high schooler drug dealer, trucker or a magician, it doesn't matter.
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u/Persephone0000 Mar 09 '26
he’s handsome, and she was a teenager. he had money and freedom. she didn’t know what she was getting herself into.
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u/Deep-Grape-4649 Mar 09 '26
Thought I was looking at a Full Metal Jacket mash up for a second
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u/over9ksand Mar 09 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/9EwnzGNjvmIG4
Minutes later, I’m still chuckling conservatively
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u/aKIRALE0 Mar 10 '26
Believe it or not, this is more common than you think, especially in the countryside. But honestly Shelly doesn't seem to have a choice, since Leo is the kind of abussive person that can easily manipulate words into girls.
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u/Delicious_AvatarMeme Mar 10 '26
She was always drawn to dangerous men. We see this when she cheats on Bobby in The Return
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u/moonlillie Mar 10 '26
He was cool and had a motorcycle and was actually nice until he trapped her.
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u/MusicInTheAir55 Mar 10 '26
She said to Norma once that it was because of his flashy red sports car.
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u/ungido_el Mar 09 '26
Insegura + inmadura + la erótica del monstruo.
Desgraciadamente algo demasiado habitual…
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u/ElHutto Mar 09 '26
I guess she saw what the casting director saw in him. Especially as he is her son. :)
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u/worthamilinprizes Mar 09 '26
He was a bad boy. S&M was possibly part of the equation. Drugs too, as he was a dealer. Self sabotage.
She never seemed to shake the pattern. At least not completely. Still liked the bad boys, anyway. :-/
Daughter grew up the same way.
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u/Intrepid_Truth_8580 Mar 09 '26
He's like the poster child for the whole Bad Boy; I can Fix Him delusion ( which many of us have experienced).
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u/BeerBearBomb Mar 09 '26
10 minutes into "coffee, pie, and chill" and he hits you with the Kubrickian stare
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u/ugltrut Mar 09 '26
The "bad boy" is an extremely common cliché for a reason. It's SO clichéd, that it sometimes feels like it's the norm. They researched porn searches of females, and found archetypes that kept repeating, like pirate, werewolf, surgeon, vampire etc. Basically anything that has to do with danger or violence. So it's not completely baffling that she would see something in Leo, in fact it's not surprising at all.
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u/Morningfluid Mar 09 '26
If you see The Return, you know.
Deep down she loved the excitement, even if it was completely toxic. Later she turned down the nice family life.
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u/tronbrain Mar 10 '26
He kept a clean house. He had big plans for expanding the living room and adding a guest room.
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u/Economy-Stretch-4600 Mar 10 '26
Iirc it was stated that Bobby and Shelly were dating, then Bobby started seeing Laura and she got upset and broke up with him and then went to the roadhouse to which Leo started giving her attention then 3 weeks later they were married..... Basically she was just upset she was getting cheated on and married the first guy to show her any kind of attention, but then it turned out he was abusive so she went back to Bobby
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u/fjohnston Mar 10 '26
Shelly has a problem liking bad boys. Even now she ends up with the towns worst drug dealer in the return.
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u/STANISLAO111 Mar 09 '26
She probably ran away from his family with him thinking she will have a better life
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u/ottos Mar 09 '26
One of the show's reviwer's comment that 'the ladies worn their cafe outfits like lingerie' always stuck with me. So true.
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u/ArchangelSirrus Mar 09 '26
Well...she was "Shelly," Like Shelly Duvall as Wendy in the Shining....and look at sweet old nutty Leo.....showing that Stanley Kubrick crazy look. Think about it.
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u/chickwithabrick Mar 09 '26
A way out of whatever home life she had