Nadine Hurley

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Nadine Hurley (played by Wendy Robie) is a fictional character on the 1990-1991 primetime ABC series Twin Peaks. She is married to Big Ed and is well known in the town for her ferocity and eccentricity. Nadine wears a patch over her left eye, having lost it in a hunting accident on their honeymoon. Ed's guilt over the accident (and other things) is perhaps all that holds together their mostly unhappy marriage, as he would rather have married Norma Jennings, his high-school sweetheart.

After trying to commit suicide at the end of the first season (by overdosing on a mixture of pills), Nadine awakes from the resulting coma believing herself to be a teenager in high school and, incidentally, just "dating" her husband. Inexplicably, she also acquires a permanent, almost superhuman strength after she awakens from the coma (though her potential strength is hinted at in a season one episode in which she bends the tempered steel bars of a rowing machine while furiously exercising). Though the cause of her "power" is left largely to the viewer's imagination, adrenaline is circuitously mentioned at one point by Dr. Jacoby, as well as is the comment, "that tissue's packed in there pretty tight."

As series two progresses, Nadine and Ed decide to "break up," and she begins pursuit of teenage Mike Nelson (captain of the Twin Peaks wrestling team). This in turn leaves Ed free to pursue Norma.

In the final episode, Nadine suffers a blow to the head that results in the simultaneous loss of her great strength and her delusions of teenhood (she apparently, however, has no memory of anything that has occurred at least as far back as the suicide attempt). The full repercussions of her recovery, including the potential scuppering of Big Ed's and Norma's newly-announced marriage plans, were left to be addressed in a third season that was never to be.