As you know, there are many different kinds of twins and almost all of them have been depicted at some point in the dramatic arts. There are political metaphor twins, like those roundy Victorian infants in high-waisted trews, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. There are well-behaved girl twins who wear nice dresses and sing in unison, like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, or those adorable sisters in beloved children’s film The Shining (full disclosure: I’ve only seen YouTube clips of this).
There are charming salt-of-the-earth crime twins like the Krays. Ah, those halcyon days when Londoners could keep their doors open, speak in rhyming slang and have their legs broken by the Krays for not paying their protection money, but it was always an honour and they were complete gentlemen about it, lawks, love-a-duck, etc. Nowadays, you don’t even know your neighbours.
There are also philosopher twins like the Cheeky Girls (“Touch my bum, that is life,” they memorably sang on their masterwork, Cheeky Song) and comically differentiated separated-at-birth twins like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was big, and Danny DeVito, who was small, and who together invented the sassy leaning-against-one-another movie poster.
The best twins are, of course, future president of Ireland Jedward, who since appearing on Celebrity Big Brother seem to legally constitute one person — a sort of mystery of the twinity, if you will. And what of Romulus, who built the city of Rome on the corpse of his brother Remus? That was some day too, in fairness. Yes, the pantheon of twins contains multitudes. It’s a lot to think about. Touch my bum, that is life, as the old saying goes.
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Echoes, the new thriller TV series that debuted today on Netflix, is also about twins because it is felt they haven’t suffered enough. Not content to see twins as individuals with complex and distinct personalities, television producers are committed to the idea that they’re all into creepy weirdo behaviour, when even a cursory glance at humanity will tell you that everyone is into creepy weirdo behaviour. We’re a disgrace, really.
In Echoes, we have Michelle Monaghan playing two very different twins. One of them is a horse farmer, farming delicious, succulent horses somewhere in North Carolina. Much like the subject of last week’s column, interior designer Shea McGee, this horsey twin has the name of an Irish auld lad: Leni McCleary (my book, Irish Auld Lad Names in Contemporary American Television, is forthcoming).
Meanwhile, over in Hollywood, we have Gina, a best-selling writer who saunters into a boardroom full of people who are designing her new book cover and gets them to rip up all their plans, but inspirationally, like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society or me at an Irish Times editorial meeting. Both are married to different kinds of hunk. Gina to a shaven-headed hunk who knows fine wine. Leni to a sometimes-topless hunk who knows horses. If I was to observe the main difference between Leni and Gina, however, it’s that Leni has gone missing after a break-in at her home and that Gina has not. There are no flies on me.
Gina returns to the family farm to get to the bottom of this mystery and soon we learn that, unbeknown to the other schmucks, Leni and Gina have been swapping lives for years. Back in their hometown, everyone loves horsey Leni but they are annoyed by Gina’s big city ways. This is, of course, America, where when you move to the big city you’re usually never seen again and can invent a cool nickname for yourself if you want. In Ireland when you move to the big city, if there’s even a slight incline in the road, you can see your family back home, waving at you and shouting a nickname you can’t escape.
Soon, for reasons that don’t entirely make sense, Gina starts pretending to be both twins. The trick to being Leni, by the way, is to tie your hair into a side ponytail, wear plaid and speak like charismatic avian personality Foghorn Leghorn. This subterfuge leads to whole scenes where Leni pretends Gina is in the next room “resting” and everyone just accepts it, except for the wily Columbo-esque police chief. The police chief can see that when she counts these twins, she only ever counts to “one” and not the more usual number for twins: “two”. Yes, there are no flies on her either. I was hoping that eventually Leni would just use a glove puppet to represent Gina. The rest of the town would probably assume that it was all part of Gina’s pretentious metropolitan shtick. It would certainly work in darkest Kildare (“I see you’re a glove puppet these days, Patrick. Is that popular in Dublin?”)
Sadly, that’s not what happens. Mystery is piled on mystery. A third hunk is added to the mix, a “bad boy” hunk who has tattoos and a motorcycle and needs a wash. Gina eventually returns so that Michelle Monaghan can act against herself. This is every actor’s dream. We learn, in flashback, that the original Gina had fragile mental health and that Leni partly prescribed this anxiety-inducing, secretive, criminal double-life as a form of therapy. Look, it’s better than being on a HSE waiting list.
You’ll like this show if you like Michelle Monaghan, Foghorn Leghorn, twins and feeling confused. “What the f**k is going on?” says one of the twins to the other twin in the third episode, and I found that very relatable. It’s probably a direct quote from the writers’ room. Maybe it’s the genre of television in which this sits, or possibly an alternative title. Personally, I think they should have called it Double Trouble and had a poster of the twins back-to-back, being sassy and looking over the tops of their sunglasses.
There’s a version of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul that could have had the titular character and his wife and co-conspirator Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) standing back-to-back being sassy in sunglasses. Better Call Saul ended this week and it was a satisfying finale. The early seasons contained some of the best television episodes I’ve ever seen. It was a legal drama about a “bad” brother Jimmy/Saul (Bob Odenkirk) trying to please a “good” brother Charles (Michael McKean), and the strange angles creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould applied to that, both visually and thematically, made it beautiful and sad.
It was about how someone’s character can be shaped by conflicting tendencies, moral choices and other people’s perceptions. But as it progressed it began to feel cluttered with too many characters, many of whom had predetermined fates in another TV show. It was too many shows in one, often without the main storylines even crossing over. By the last season, it consolidated into a more exciting but less interesting show about an amoral lawyer embroiled with violent drug dealers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still brilliantly made television with incredible performances from all the main cast. But I liked the show about the troubled brothers best.
