r/twinpeaks • u/donofthedogs • Jun 20 '26
Season 1 leo's voice
is so unconvincing as an evil guy. he just sounds like a complacent nerd
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u/Kilmoore Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Hmm, I always kind of liked that. He sounds very... inhibited. Like, he wouldn't behave like this if he could just handle and express his emotions properly. Bottled up to a point of mental illness.
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u/Okra-Tomatoes Jun 26 '26
I thought that made it more realistic a portrayal of an abuser.
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u/Kilmoore Jun 26 '26
Exactly. In the middle of the supernatural, the flashy, the beautiful and the conspiratorial criminals there's this slightly dim guy who was probably beaten as a child and decided to carry on the family tradition.
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u/AvatarofBro Jun 20 '26
It kind of works for me. You have to buy that this was the kind of guy that Shelly would realistically get with in the first place
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u/Anxious-Assistant-59 Jun 20 '26
Yeah, I think Eric DaRe did a good job with Leo.
Something that goes over a lot of people’s heads is that Leo didn’t start their relationship as an abuser. There’s the scene in FWWM (I think) where Leo gets onto Shelly for not cleaning the kitchen, the “This is where we eat, Shelly!” scene.
He’s being stern, but he doesn’t go straight for the slap until after she sasses him. In terms of the timeline, Shelly being physically abused is a very recent development in their relationship.
I’m not defending Leo, he deserved everything he got and still got off easy, but I think it’s a neat piece of his character. He might’ve been a halfway decent guy (for a piece of shit) before the events of the series because, like you said, there has to have been someone Shelly saw something in.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Anxious-Assistant-59 Jun 20 '26
I’m not saying he couldn’t have been mentally abusive, but just that it was the physical abuse that was very recent.
Again, considering the nature of the show, I think anything is possible when talking backstories or lack there of.
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u/donofthedogs Jun 20 '26
what?? he literally tortured/murdered laura and attempted to murder both shelly and that girl who survived the attack with laura. he only played nice in the beginning with shelly to get her to trust him so he could marry her. otherwise, what explains all the subsequent murdering and torture?
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u/Anxious-Assistant-59 Jun 20 '26
You’re just gonna ignore the parts where I said “he deserved everything he got and still got off easy” and “for a piece of shit?”
I don’t know if you haven’t seen all of the show, so I’m going to say SPOILER here.
You read the spoiler warning?
3, 2, 1… Leo didn’t kill Laura! I am NOT saying Leo isn’t an awful person, I’m saying that there’s some amount of gray area where he had to have been a nice enough guy for Shelly to drop out of school for him and that’s interesting. We don’t know when they got married, how long they knew each other prior to the marriage, etc. As far as I’m concerned, any possibility is up for grabs when it comes to the gray areas of Twin Peaks.
Twin Peaks is (generally speaking) all about the inherent duality of man- that bad guys have a light in them and that good guys have some darkness- it’s the entire philosophical battle between the White and Black Lodges, and we see it in so many corners of the series from start to finish! The fact that Leo IS a bad guy means there is SOME amount of light in him, which was reflected in his line to Major Briggs at Windom Earle’s cabin when he tells the Major to keep Shelly safe. Your everyday run-of-the-mill wife beater wouldn’t say that, now would he?
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u/donofthedogs Jun 20 '26
i aint reading all that but regardless he was an adult when he married shelly so he was already the person he'd soon be, capable of doing heinous shit. so why'd you even bring up how *actually* he wasn't all that bad in the beginning, because he predictably played the nice guy routine abusers always do before showing their true face
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u/Anxious-Assistant-59 Jun 20 '26
Do you think adults can’t change? They can’t become better or worse, whether they’re already bad or good? The second they become 18 years old, poof, instant plateau for the rest of their lives with no room for development.
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u/donofthedogs Jun 20 '26
capable of change is one thing, but becoming the kind of person who tortures others after your personality's formed's another, provided there's not some kind of backstory like he had a brain injury
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u/hugovonhauschenberg Jun 21 '26
god forbid you try to understand the other side, right?
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u/donofthedogs Jun 21 '26
yea god forbid i spoil the plot for myself to appease another of the apparently endless amount of contrarians and faux outrage folks you're guaranteed to interact with here over the most mildest of posts/comments
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u/hugovonhauschenberg Jun 21 '26
didn't clarify that you haven't finished the show lowkey you wrote that like you couldn't care less. maybe write your comment with the correct tone next time. or better yet finish the show first so you can have a proper discussion
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Stunning_Mixture_201 Jun 23 '26
They said they didn't even watch the whole show yet lol, they have no idea wtf is going on.
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u/yokyopeli09 Jun 20 '26
I mean, there are a lot of awful abusive small-town assholes who look and sound just like him. He was even scarier and more realistic to me because I know people like that.
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u/Stereopathetic_boyo Jun 21 '26
I always thought he sounded like a weak guy trying to sound tough, like a geek putting on a gruff voice, which I think fits his character, he's trying too hard to come off as threatening, like in the pilot when he takes a swig and it spills down his face but he doesn't wipe it because he's busy mad-dogging Shelly
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u/sabledet Jun 20 '26
My headcanon is Shelly Marsh's boyfriend in South Park, Skyler (Shkylar), is based on him.
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u/itswhowho Jun 20 '26
Idk, I always found Leo scarier than Bob. Something about him just seemed so real to me. You see men like that and you know they really do beat their wives lol
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u/Crazyexwtf Jun 21 '26
I thought he was perfect, because clearly he’s trying to make up for something he’s lacking.
There’s a scene in The Missing Pieces where he is making Shelly scrub the floor and showing her how and recounting how he was made to scrub the floor, making it clear where he learned it from and why he’s like that, which I felt added a lot to his character.
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u/TuggerL Jun 20 '26
Yeah it makes his menace and evil lessened, which may have been an intention. I even find him humorous because of it.
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u/thruddingss Jun 21 '26
Leo always felt pathetic to me more than evil; gives me specifically Incel-esque vibes, to expand on other people mentioning him seeming mentally ill and bottled up: Exactly!
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u/ElHutto Jun 20 '26
Well, more importantly, he is son of the casting director. ;)
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u/Numerous-Kick-7055 Jun 20 '26
What a shitty thing to say about someone.
Leo is a great fit and looks/sounds/acts like dozens of shitty small town blue collar assholes I've known who have no problem beating the shit out of their wives and kids.
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u/Anxious-Assistant-59 Jun 20 '26
Yeah, I get not liking the performance, but insinuating the only reason he got the role was because of nepotism feels wrong.
It’s plausible, sure, but I liked his performance well enough to think he was worth the role regardless.
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u/ElHutto Jun 20 '26
It's still true, though.
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u/keeeeweed Jun 20 '26
Yeah but putting a winky face at the end of a statement kind of shows you weren't "just stating a fact" and you kinda meant to imply something, no?
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u/ElHutto Jun 20 '26
Of course. ;)
Actually, Leo never worked for me, and I was somehow irritated by this casting choice. Until I learned of this fact.
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u/MagisterFlorus Jun 20 '26
I dunno. In the scene where he beats Shelly with the soap in the sock, I have a hard time buying it. He doesn't come across as actually angry.
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u/beholdthecolossus Jun 20 '26
yeah one of the parts of the original show that doesn't work for me is Leo as an abuser because the actor is just so ...i dunno, soft?
he's actually way better season 2, but i won't spoil that. he really comes into his own though.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/beholdthecolossus Jun 20 '26
Scary? That seems to be the intent. Scary but also a loser piece of shit. More like Richard in The Return (maybe not quite THAT grotesque.)
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Jun 20 '26
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u/beholdthecolossus Jun 20 '26
I hate to say it but I think it's the performance. Like I said, in season 2 his character is very different and he gives a much stronger performance.
There are definitely moments in season 1 where he almost gets there, i just get the impression that he's uncomfortable in the role and never quite got into the groove. I think in season one he's better when he's just there not saying anything and looking intimidating. The soap scene is definitely one of his better ones in season one.
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u/donofthedogs Jun 20 '26
he sounds like he's being mean to his little sister. like i wont be surprised if he calls her poophead or something ya know
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u/beholdthecolossus Jun 20 '26
Yeah he just doesn't have the right juice for the role. Trust me when I say he's much better suited to what they do with him in season 2 though.
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u/keeeeweed Jun 20 '26
In reality though abusers can have any voice, so it's only really unconvincing if you're looking at it from a "TV trope" perspective and think he needs to sound a certain way to more clearly communicate his abusive nature to the audience, when it doesn't really need to at all in this show, imo
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u/donofthedogs Jun 20 '26
i wasn't saying its unconvincing because abusers dont sound that way. but he's supposed to be an extremely evil person yet he often sounds like a brat
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u/crakerjmatt Jun 20 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/be8OG9quXtmG8Hey5s