Thoughts on Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer:

• Welcome to the episode that ignited a phenomenon. The first two episodes of Twin Peaks sparked excited discussion among its initial audience, but the transcendently strange Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer kicked that discussion up several notches as all over America, people turned to one another with enormous “what-the-f*ck-just-happened” looks on their faces. I literally cannot believe that a major television network aired this. Whoever greenlit this has the sort of testicles ordinarily found on pachyderms. You want truly daring television? You want to experience dislocation and elemental fright? Watch. This. Episode.

• Twin Peaks killed Laura Palmer.

That’s the dark, unspoken secret at the heart of this show. It’s becoming increasingly clear that many of these people had a hand in escorting the girl toward Oblivion, that few of the characters we’ve met can be called blameless.

• This opening scene – a comically banal, silent dinner among the members of the Horne clan – is one of my favorite episode openings of all time. The whole thing possesses a demented genius, and that dreamlike sensation hovers mondo-effectively over the proceedings as the credits flash by, the silence ending immediately after “Directed by David Lynch” fades from the screen.

• We’re introduced to Jerry Horne, Ben Horne’s brother, played by David Patrick Kelly – a guy I never see in anything anymore despite enjoying his performances. Where’s he been? Probably wearing a gorilla outfit in a Richard Foreman play. Kelly’s one of those love him or hate him guys; he’s got a very particular performance style, one that’s most advantageously harnessed by oddballs like Lynch and Foreman. You probably recognize him as one of the greasy lowlifes that helped kill Eric Draven in The Crow.

• How weird is the whole Brie and butter sandwich thing? It’s another of those weirdly dreamlike moments, and it’s strangely funny to me. It’s also interesting to me on a thematic level. This is one of those allow-me-to-reel-off-on-a-tangent moments. Hold onto yer hats and glasses:

It seems to me that, among other things, Twin Peaks is deeply interested in Appetites. On the most obvious level, the show is totally freakin’ obsessed with food. This makes two episodes in a row that we’ve watched people stuff their mouths so full that they’re barely able to communicate. Here, we watch as Ben Horne tears into that sandwich like a man starving in the desert. He seems to breathe it in (when’s the last time you saw someone do that?) before eating it. There’s a curious animalistic relish to it all. Then there’s the fact that he’s got a full plate of food in front of him that his wife’s prepared, presumably, that he’s ignoring in favor of the sandwich. It’s a kind of culinary infidelity. But on a larger scale, the kind of raw hunger and deep appreciation for food we see in Twin Peaks is echoed on a lot of levels within the narrative. There’s hunger for illicit sex, for narcotics, for violence, for sin. There’s hunger for a faded National ideal, for great cherry pie and fresh hot black coffee, for simplicity and truth. And there’s deeper hunger than any of that, which we’ll discuss as we go. Absolutely none of this is intentional in all probability. But it’s an interesting undercurrent in the show, and those of you who read my Back to the Island columns know I enjoy mulling this stuff over.

Ben: “Jerr, I didn’t come here to lose my shirt; I just came to take it off.”

— One-Eyed Jack’s manages the feat of being completely surreal and utterly implausible yet somehow perfectly appropriate within the context of the series. A log cabin brothel with a large number of elaborately-costumed Ladies of the Evening that apparently lies empty until Ben Horne shows up? Sure! Why not! The setting serves to add a whole new layer of sleaze to the proceedings, and further emphasizes the carnality of much of the bad behavior in this town. Notable clue/fact: Ben’s mention to Jerry that the new girl at One-Eyed Jack’s being “freshly scented from the perfume counter” hints that Ronette Pulaski, who we learned last episode also worked the perfume counter at the Horne store, may also have worked in this backwoods bordello.

• The curtains here hint at the curtains that appear at the end of the episode, creating a nice bookend effect. They also hint at being an enormous vagina. Do you think this completely slipped the notice of Standards and Practices? Or were they too bewildered/engrossed to care?

Leo: “Go out for a pass.”
Bobby: “…What?”

• Bobby and Mike (or “Snake” and “Bopper,” as they apparently like to call themselves in a moment that’s hilarious and truthful to the wannabe-badass status of these characters) head into the woods to their business with Leo, reinforcing for us again the dark and unsavory aspects of that place. Their scene with Leo has a proto-Blair Witch feeling to it (the shots of the camera moving through the trees eerily capture the sensation of being deep in the woods late at night) and introduces an element that I honestly don’t remember the resolution to: The shadowy figure observing them from behind a tree. Way to consistently creep me out during this episode, Lynch.

• Nadine is revealed to be a very, very strong woman here. The hell is up with her ability to bend her rowing machine like a pretzel? I honestly don’t remember whether this was ever explained, but I’m presuming it’s related to what we learn by the end of the episode.

Announcer: “Each day brings a new beginning, and every hour holds a promise of an….Invitation to Love.”

• Our introduction to “Invitation to Love” arrives in this episode, even if we don’t actually see any of the show itself. Invitation to Love is the Soap Opera that Twin Peaks’ residents watch throughout the run of the series, and its existence (and its absurdity) highlight for us the idea that Lynch and Frost are both commenting on/satirizing the Soap genre, and celebrating it at the same time. Want definitive proof? Shelly’s shown watching the show’s breathless introduction, then shutting it off disdainfully, verbally dismissing the Romance Novel-quality of the announcer’s words, as if to say that in “real life,” Invitation to Love is pure bunkum. She then promptly answers the door for Bobby, her Soap-Opera-style secret lover, and the two proceed to act out exactly the sort of emotionally-heightened scene that would be included on a show like Invitation to Love, complete with dramatic turns, whispered aggression, and forbidden passion.

Cooper: “By way of explaining what we’re about to do, I’m going to first talk to you a little bit about the country called Tibet.”

• Zen begins heading deeper into weirdsville with this inspired scene, introducing us to Cooper’s utterly unorthodox deductive methods, which he claims were bestowed on him “subconsciously” in a dream connected to the plight of the Tibetan people (and this is, in a way, important information for us. All of this is. Keep it in mind for the future). Following the “skewed Sherlock” analogy established in the last episode, Zen elaborates further, making Cooper a Metaphysical Detective. There’s no rational way to justify a deductive technique involving throwing rocks at a bottle, but rationality is very much beside the point here. Twin Peaks isn’t concerned with what’s rational – it’s concerned with what’s irrational but nonetheless “true.” To quote a little Sandman up in here: “This is magnificent … and it’s true! It never happened, yet it is still true!”

Cooper: “Would you please put on the kitchen mittens?”

I mean, really. I have a love for total goofiness when it’s this dry and done this well, and this scene might as well be a Snickers for how it satisfies me. From the way the Sherriff’s Dept. all leans forward in their seats at the start of Coop’s lecture, to the confusion over whether to put a check next to “the Jack with one eye,” to Lucy’s terrifically daft “Oh, I’m getting excited,” to Andy getting beaned in the head with an errant stone, this remains a marvelously off-kilter piece of acting and writing. That said, don’t let the goofy vibe distract you from what’s “true” about this scene, and how it informs what we know of the show and of Cooper. Twin Peaks ain’t your ordinary town, and subconscious deductive intuition is exactly the sort of skill set a G-Man needs around here.

• Audrey’s Diner Dance (thank you, Sherilyn Fenn) cements my observations from the Pilot and Episode One as fact: Those crazy teenagers love their spooky/sexy Jazz music. I imagine there being a whole alternate universe of beret-wearing, upright bass playing, Le Jazz Hot purveying musicians catering to the Audreys of Lynch’s Alternate-Earth, and I love that.

Lucy: “Agent Cooper will be right with you.”
Albert: “Yeah, I can hear perfectly well, Curly.”

• Special Agent Albert Rosenfeld enters the picture, played by the always-welcome Miguel Ferrer. Albert’s one of my favorite characters on the show, and it’s not simply for his amusingly brusque, insulting manner. The way that Truman steers him aside and informs him that, ordinarily, “if a stranger walked into my station talking this kind of crap he’d be looking for his teeth two blocks up on queer street,” makes me laugh and impresses on us that Truman’s a good man, but that he’s got the same no-bullshit steel in him that Cooper does. The earnest thumbs-up that Cooper flashes afterward is even funnier. And Cooper grabbing Truman’s nose and quacking like a duck? Hilarious. So, so odd.

• Touches of Eastern mysticism are making their way into this show little by little. First we get Cooper’s whackadoo deduction methods and impromptu Tibetan history lesson, and now Lucy’s huge-and-nondescript Tibet book. It’s an adorable touch to have her reading up on the country after Cooper’s earlier demonstration. We’re going to be looking deeper into this stuff as we go.

• The end of Nadine’s quest for perfectly silent drape runners is laugh-out-loud funny.

Sarah Palmer: “Leland, what is going on in this house?!”

• In Twin Peaks no one, including the grownups, listens to anything resembling contemporary music. Leland’s dance to Pennsylvania 6-5000 is a grotesquerie of grief – simultaneously heart-rending and wince-inducing. The sight of him “dancing” with Laura’s picture is a potent reminder of how important Lynch’s personal vision is to this series. In someone else’s hands this could be terrible. In Lynch’s hands it feels, emotionally, enormously complicated.

Mike: “Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds: ‘Fire, walk with me.’ We lived among the people. I think you say ‘convenience store.’ We lived above it. I mean it like it is, like it sounds. I too have been touched by the devilish one. Tattoo on the left shoulder. Oh, but when I saw the face of God I was changed. I took the entire arm off. My name is Mike. His name is Bob.”

• At the end of a perfectly enjoyable episode, Cooper slides into bed at the Great Northern, settles in for a good night’s rest, and promptly falls down a hellishly bizarre rabbit hole, dragging us along for the ride. It’s a moment that opens wide the “mythology” of Twin Peaks and makes clear to us that whatever is happening in this town is deeper, stranger, and less explicable than we could have imagined. I’m attempting to steer clear of spoilers and such writing these columns, while also attempting to provide context for the series as a whole. It’s a tricky balance. I don’t think I’m being unfair, or really “spoilery” at all, by telling you first-time-watchers out there that all of this has real, significant meaning within the world of the show. This is not simply a kooky, meaningless exercise in surrealism – this is our proper introduction to Twin Peaks’ weird, working-class mysticism.

Bob: “I promise, I will kill again.”

• Ladies and gentlemen, meet Bob, aka The Spooky Man In Sarah Palmer’s Visions. Wondering whether it was insanity alone causing Mrs. Palmer’s freakouts? Wonder no more. Bob is real. Seeing Bob’s discomfiting face twice now in the Palmer household clearly underlines for us that Bob was in some way entwined with Laura Palmer’s death. His words in the dream sequence all but confirm that he may have killed her. What’s ironic about the complaints of the time that Twin Peaks hadn’t solved the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer is that we’d been shown and essentially told EXACTLY who killed Laura Palmer and we’re on the third episode of the series. And yet, as with the rest of this show, the answers here aren’t really that clear-cut or straightforward. We’ve got a ways to go before we get to the heart of these metaphorical/metaphysical woods.

• The sudden introduction of this truly unusual (and brief) blue-collar mythology creates real unease and displacement here. Who are these characters? What do “Mike’s” words mean? We get the impression that Mike and Bob were once on the same side – the side of Evil – but that Mike repented, claiming to have seen “the face of God.” Interestingly, there’s a sense that Mike is grasping at human words here that he does not ordinarily use, attempting to define our material existence for himself as he speaks to/through Cooper. The implication that what appear to be supernatural beings existed above a convenience store grounds the mystic in the banal, in much the same way that Lynch & Co. have been grounding the bizarre affectations of the town’s residents in the banal. These characters names serve the same function – Mike and Bob couldn’t be more banal names for dream-entering entities (and notice that their names mirror the names of teenagers Bobby and Mike, aka Snake and Bopper). Notice also the buzzing of electricity that we hear in the background, and recall the flickering morgue lights from the pilot episode.

• The circle of candles acts as a mirror-image for another circle that will become exceedingly important to the larger story in the show. Those of you who’ve seen the show before, I’ll hint at this with one word: Glastonbury.

• Notice that there’s a mound of earth similar, if not identical, to the mound found in the abandoned train car sitting at the center of the candles’ ring. The feeling of ritual evoked by the past two episodes becomes literal in this scene as the mounds of earth take on a mystic aspect. As we go deeper into the mythology I’ll be talking more about the inspirations for it, the connections we can draw and the observations one can make about the metaphysics of all of this. That is, if you’re interested in continuing the show.

Little Man From Another Place: “She’s filled with secrets.”

• After these flashes of revelation, things settle down (so to speak) and we enter the Red Room, a place as unexplainable as it is unsettling and compelling. The shot of The Dwarf shaking horribly with his back turned to the audience may be one of the more disturbing shots I’ve seen Lynch produce. The appearance of an aged Cooper seems conspicuously obtuse, but this is yet another detail to keep in mind. And then there’s Laura – Laura Palmer. She’s there too. The show leaves open the question of how much of this is subconscious craziness and how much is “true,” and it’s a choice/tone that I admire.

• Did you notice that there’s a model of Saturn/a Saturn lamp resting on the Room’s coffee table? Saturn is known in astrological circles as a “Malefic” – a planet that by some interpretations augers bad luck and misfortune. It is associated with limitations, restrictions, depression, fear and mortality. Saturn historically governs nocturnal birds of prey – namely owls(and let’s just say that we’ll be seeing/hearing more about owls), which have traditionally been understood as symbolic of death (though this is disputed). And while all of this is more than sufficient to paint a negative picture, it’s important to note that a majority of modern Astrologers do not believe Saturn to be a necessarily “negative force,” so much as a facilitating force (although this talk seems even more New Agey to me than usual for that field; a “feel good” bromide to soften the symbolism). Saturn represents the “dark night of the soul” that we all walk through, and which gives us the opportunity to rise above it and discover the daylight. Or not. One could say that Saturn operates similarly to how the dark half of the yin-yang does. It is the necessary darkness to the light, a balancing force that gives its opposite true meaning, and gives humanity the necessary conflict to purify and improve the soul. All of this is stuff for us to keep in the backs of our minds.

• The Red Room itself is ingenious in its design. There’s a timeless, classic look to it all – my nightmares have rarely looked this effortlessly cool. The yin-yang aspect I just discussed is present in the floor of the Room, with its alternating Black and White streaks. Note also the statue of Venus that sits in the background. In mythology, Venus was the daughter of Jupiter. You’ll want to remember this too. I’ll go into detail further down the line.

• Cooper’s vision achieves (for me) a rare state of dreaming-awake. Years later, Joss Whedon would explore this state further, to admirably similar success, in the Buffy episode “Restless” (has a “cheese man” ever been so funny and eerie?). I’m going to float a kind of overarching theory on the show as a whole here – one that I started in on in the last column – based on moments like these, and on smaller “fish in the percolator” moments throughout the show. The essence of Twin Peaks, on a thematic level, is the depiction of a dreamlike state threatened by/coexistent with encroaching nightmare. When Donna remarks in Traces to Nowhere that “it’s like I’m having the most beautiful dream, and the most terrible nightmare, all at once,” it acts to sum up so much of the feel of this show and this town. When Audrey comments that “I love this music – it’s too dreamy,” it reinforces this for us. The town of Twin Peaks is, in a very real metaphorical sense of the word, a kind of subconscious Camelot under subtle siege. Lest you think me off my meds, or just spraying my pages with purpled poppycock with that last comparison, let me assure you that the show confirms this idea of itself for us with some small, choice details. For instance, the references to JFK and the Kennedys? That’s a reference to the era known as…Camelot; a time in history where a dream died.

I plan to delve into the deep end of the pool on this stuff further down the line, as the storyline becomes clearer for all of us. For now I think it sufficient to say that Special Agent Cooper is a kind of knight on this show – a knight of certain purity and faith (and eccentricity) that undergoes dire trials for the sake of his code and his “kingdom,” the good ol’ cherry pie-baking, damn-fine-coffee-makin’ US of A that exists, if it ever existed, in some misted-over long ago; a US of A that’s made tantalizingly close to (surface) reality for Cooper among the Douglas Firs of Twin Peaks.

Anyway, the point for now is that Twin Peaks as a whole operates as a waking dream. Why is there a fish in the percolator? Because there is. Because that’s what happens in dreams. You make coffee and discover that there’s a fish in the percolator. Time runs backward, forward. Spaces compress, expand. Dread is everywhere, but so are Joy, and Grace. Dreams are a form of magic – some of the oldest magic in the world. The Aboriginal people of Australia constructed their religion on the notion of the “Dreamtime,” as for instance. Dreamers and supposed practitioners of magic wield their power inexplicably, without rational explanation. Both rely on subjective input and interpretation. Both possess two sides, one light, one dark (howdy, Lost  fans!) but, as in dreams, magic (as depicted in world religions, and to a lesser extent in fiction) is unpredictable. You might start out in one place, and end up in another place altogether. Sides can change without warning. If there are “rules” to dreams, or to “magic,” those rules are obtuse and unreliable. There’s a kind of weird anti-logic to the mysticism of Twin Peaks. Things add up emotionally/psychologically (in sometimes horrific, sometimes wondersome ways) but they do NOT add up “logically.” This is one of my favorite aspects of the series. Here, in this town, magic is real, is dangerous, is ultimately inexplicable – and that’s a large part of what makes it all believably “mythic” to me. At the same time, elements like the Little Man’s comments seem like sheer unmitigated nonsense, but end up making cockeyed “sense” in an again dreamlike/intuitive way.

• Whew. That’s all, folks. The time has come to play Caesar. We’ve now talked about the first three episodes of Twin Peaks. Some of you seem to be digging it, and some of you seem utterly bored by it. Will you cancel the show all over again? Or will you elect to keep it on the air? Vote “Renew” or “Cancel” in the comments below, or in the Lost & Found thread and let me know your thoughts.

The results will post on Monday. Are you not entertained?!

This week’s Twin Peaks Ephemera

Each week I’ll link to a bit of pop culture ephemera that was created around the time of Twin Peaks’ airing, or that was created due to the show’s influence/inspiration, or is otherwise related to the show. This week brings two offerings:

• How to speak like the Little Man From Another Place
• David Lynch directs Dirty Dancing

Catch up on Lost & Found!

• Lost & Found: An Introduction, A Proposition, A Preponderance of Purpled Prose
• Lost & Found: And The Winner Is…
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (S1, Pilot)

Traces to Nowhere & Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer (S1, eps. 1 and 2)

“He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand.” – Mark Twain, the Mysterious Stranger

Laura: “I just know I’m gonna get lost in those woods again tonight…I just know it.”

As you may have noticed, we’re back at Episode One again. No, you’re not crazy. I unthinkingly labeled last week’s column as “Episode One” because that’s what it is – the first episode. Logical, right? What I’d forgotten is that a majority of “official” sources don’t do this. They list last week’s opener as “The Pilot,” and the next episode as “Episode One.” This makes weird sense given the strange way this show was initially distributed on DVD, but it still feels pretty bassackwards to me. Nevertheless, I’ve asked Chud’s own Eileen The Magnificent to edit last week’s column to reflect this appropriately Lynchian bit of weirdness.

As of this column I’m going to be stepping things up, covering two episodes a week. This’ll get us through the show faster. If you haven’t seen Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer just stop reading once you hit that section and come on back once you’ve watched it. That is, if you folks want to keep going. The time has come to indulge your gladiatorial judgment. Will Twin Peaks live, or will it die once more? Are you enjoying it enough to keep going? If you aren’t, are you nonetheless interested in hearing what I have to say about it? Or are you terminally unimpressed? Would you rather read about another show altogether? Vote “Renew” or “Cancel” in the comments below or in the Lost & Found thread and decide Twin Peaks’ fate. The virtual polls will remain open until Sunday night, at which point I’ll tally the results. Remember: every vote counts. If you’re enjoying the show/the column, it behooves you (I love that word) to vote for it, or it’s gone for good. No second chances here.

Are you writing recaps/observations about these episodes along with me? Shoot me an email and let me know. I’ll be putting together a Master List of L&F participants on Verbosity! and linking to your sites so that others can see your work.

Without further ado…..Let’s rock!

Thoughts on Traces to Nowhere:

• Here’s a marginally-interesting factoid: None of Twin Peaks’ episodes have actual titles. The titles I’m using here, and that you’ll see in use around the internet, originate from German TV. Danke, my German brethren!

• When I promised you that things would start getting weirder on this show, I’d been remembering the next episode, not this one. Traces to Nowhere spends its time continuing to build out the world of Twin Peaks, and laying down clues and red herrings regarding the identity of Laura’s killer. This episode was helmed by Duwayne Dunham, and it serves to immediately highlight how important Lynch’s touch is to the overall power of the show. Much of what feels enjoyably daft in Lynch’s hands comes across as flat when shown through another director’s lens. Dunham does capable work here, but he’s largely missing the Spark Of Madness that makes Lynch’s work so singular and special. With the exception of one brief, chilling moment toward the episode’s end there’s an overall lack of patented Lynchian dread here. That said, it’s still a solid, intriguing installment.

• The episode opens on Cooper, suspended upside down and rattling into his tape recorder to the absent Diane. He dismounts and non sequiturs into asking about Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedys, and the identity of the triggerman behind JFK’s assassination. At least, it seems like a non sequitur. It’s actually a thematic signpost, and its one that will hang around in the background of the show for the entirety of the series. More on this at the end of the column.

Cooper: “You know…this is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee.”

• Peaks’ pastry and coffee obsession really comes into full bloom in this episode: donuts, fresh black coffee, and cherry pie that’s to die for. I don’t know about the cherry pie and donuts, but coffee is a certifiable obsession for Lynch, who actually markets and sells his own “Signature Cup” coffee. One horrible baby-thing in each and every bag of beans!

….well, no. Not really. Damn fine coffee, though.

• Cooper and Audrey (whose hair has miraculously sprouted overnight) have an immediate rapport, and there’s a clear flirtation happening here. That’s kind of…creepy, seeing as she’s in high school, and he’s a federal agent. Then again, she’s Sherilyn Fenn. So there’s that.

• There are a number of elements in this episode that have a strongly dreamlike quality to them, like the entire Sherriff’s Department stuffing their faces with donuts, mumbling or silent while Cooper rattles on like he’s had 20 cups of that damn fine coffee.

• Laura’s death is attributed to loss of blood. Her wounds include bite marks – another animalistic detail glaring up at us. We also learn that she’d had sex with “at least” three men in the space of twelve hours, all of this implying some incredibly grisly things about the oblique events inside that train car.

• Leo Johnson, aka “Mr. One-Note Abusive Boyfriend Guy,” has some serious suspicion thrown his way in this episode. Dunham cuts from Hayward’s searching question, “who would do a thing like that,” directly over to the “Big Pussycat” decal on the door of Leo’s truck. We also get a bloodied shirt which Shelly, enterprising Nancy Drew that she apparently is, hides away when she discovers it. Leo may only have one note in his repertoire, but the guy plays that note pretty effectively.

Laura: “James, guess why I’m so happy today.”
James: “Because your skin is so soft and you smell so good?”

• The James/Laura flashback is hella cheesy (again highlighting the Soap Opera aspects of the show – something that operated, in part, as a commentary on other popular soaps of that era like Falcon Crest and Dallas), but Cooper’s interrogation of James highlights again for us the increasing sense that Laura’s life was spiraling out of control before she died. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the show at this point lies in how we see Laura defined by the people who knew her, and how each person seemed to see her slightly differently. In death, as well as in life, Laura Palmer is/was a mirror of sorts, reflecting back what people wanted to see. It’s not until Fire Walk With Me, the film that acts as a prequel to this story, that we actually spend time with Laura as a person, and not as a kind of human MacGuffin. Whereas this might be a detriment in the hands of lesser creative types, Laura’s essential reflectiveness serves Lynch and Frost’s preoccupations remarkably well.

• Back with Bobby and his buddy in prison we learn that Bobby owes Leo 10 grand, and that it’s the 10 grand that Cooper and Truman confiscated from Laura’s safety deposit box in the Pilot. Factor in the fact that Leo makes regular trips across the border into Canada and the Cocaine residue found in Laura’s diary, and you have the outlines of a fairly straightforward drug trade taking place in and around Twin Peaks.

Voice: “Help me.”

• Shivers.

Between scenes we cut back to the video of Laura and Donna frolicking weirdly together. This time, as Laura’s face fills the screen, an eerie voice asks for help. Is that Laura’s voice? It sure doesn’t sound like it. Are we meant to take this strange aural intruder as literal reality? Or is this simply an odd, surrealist/symbolic touch? It’s impossible to tell. You may ask: Either way, how can Cooper help Laura now? She’s dead, after all. That’s a good question, I say. A very good question. You keep that question firmly in mind, y’hear?

Lucy: “It has that open air sound, you know, where it sounds like wind blowing, like wind blowing through trees.”

• When Lynch and Frost first sold ABC on the idea of Twin Peaks they used the visual of wind blowing through the trees to try and summarize the essential atmosphere of their proposed show. I quite like the image of David Lynch standing in a polished-and-posh boardroom somewhere, making wind noises and waggling his fingers in front of bewildered, besuited Men of Business.

• Albert Rosenfeld gets his first mention in this episode. I cannot wait until he arrives. Neither can you. Trust me.

Nadine: “Cotton balls! By God – those things’ll be quiet now!”

• WTF?

• James gets released from police custody, and tells his Uncle Ed that he’s going to “need a hand from the Bookhouse Boys.” That weirdly-named group will be coming up again soon, and they’ll be helping to usher in some vague-but-very-intriguing history for all of us. You think you understand this town? This mystery? You’ve only scratched the surface.

Truman: “I think I’m gonna start studying medicine.”
Cooper: “Why’s that?”
Truman: “’Cause I’m beginning to feel a bit like Doctor Watson.”

• Hahaha…ZING! The line’s a little lame, but I appreciate that they’re linking Cooper and Truman with Holmes and Watson. The comparison is apt. Cooper and Truman serve as Funhouse mirrors for those two classic literary characters. Where Holmes used logical deduction and hard evidence alone, Cooper employs far more…eccentric techniques. Then again, Holmes was an undeniable “eccentric” to his contemporaries. The Holmes comparison is reinforced bluntly for us when Josie Packard is questioned and Cooper is able to effortlessly deduce the romantic link between Josie and Truman.

• Do you know what this show needs? More secretive sexual shenanigans. There isn’t nearly enough of this. I mean, only Bobby and Shelly and Ed and Norma and Laura and James and James and Donna and Josie and Truman are carrying on quiet affairs. What about the other 3 people in the town? Luckily, Ben Horne and Catherine Martell are also indulging in illicit snugglebunnies. And plotting to set fire to the Packard sawmill. And really creeping me out with the whole toe-kissing thing. Stop it, Horne. This whole scene is something that could literally have been plucked from Falcon Crest. It’s not even particularly exaggerated, as is the case with most of the soapier elements on the show.

Sarah Palmer: “I miss her so much…I miss her so much…I miss her so much…”

• So you know: This was an era before Computer Generated Imagery – an era reliant on in-camera trickery and practical effects to achieve what would now be rendered via CGI. The resulting effect here is undeniably cheesy, but it’s also curiously effective.

• The sudden appearance of Laura’s face, superimposed over Donna’s features, raises the question for the audience of whether Sarah Palmer might be going crazy in the wake of her daughter’s death. This kind of projection is, to my understanding, somewhat “normal” in that grieving parents sometimes befriend the friends of their lost children as a way to deal with their pain, but the effect is no less creepy/unsettling for that. I like that there’s a sense of uncertainty to the proceedings here. There are hints of something almost paranormal in this scene, but those hints are so jumbled up with Mrs. Palmer’s raw grief that they become entirely uncertain. Her repeated words (“I miss her so much”) take on the quality of an incantation, and the direction in this scene furthers that impression. There’s, again, a kind of ritualistic feeling to this, and so its entirely appropriate that it leads directly to what is, without a doubt, one of the more unsettling moments I’ve experienced with a television show.

…namely, this: the sudden and utterly inexplicable appearance of a man we’ve not met, crouched behind the bars of a bed (a bed that’s not even in the same room that Donna and Sarah are currently inhabiting and a location that has seriously disquieting implications on a number of levels, levels that we’ll discuss as we go deeper into these woods) staring directly into the camera, directly into Mrs. Palmer’s eyes, directly into OUR eyes, without explanation or reason.

It’s the music at this moment – a droning, Eastern-sounding, holy/unholy noise – that rockets this surreal touch from weird/creepy to terrifying. I’m not afraid to admit to you all that this scene made me shout out loud in fear when I first saw it as a teen, nor that it made me jump again, just as effectively, when I watched it this week. There’s no real reason for this kind of fright. I mean, it’s a guy in a jean jacket crouched by a bed. What’s so bad about that, right? And yet, it IS bad; it’s horrifying in some unspeakable way. The nightmare logic of the moment (why is there a bed there now? Who is this guy? What is that music???) just works on me, and I don’t know why. As I’d warned you initially: it won’t happen for all of you, but for some of you Twin Peaks is going to crawl under your skin and slither there. It’s gonna creep you out. And this, right here, is a primo example of that in action. If you were paying close attention during the Pilot then you’ve seen this figure once before – reflected in the mirror at episode’s end as Sarah Palmer screams in fright (you can see this moment in the final screencap from last week’s column). This man, who we’ll be formally introduced to in the next episode, personifies the spiritual black hole that is gradually revealing itself in this town. I’ll talk much more about him, and about what this “means” further down in the column.

• The one-armed man that we glimpsed briefly in the pilot returns here for another spooky cameo. A one-armed man on a show with a murder mystery at its heart? Nah….that can’t be significant at all. Twin Peaks initially intended to keep the question of who killed Laura Palmer unanswered throughout the show, branching off into other aspects of the town and of life inside it, just as the classic (read: old) program The Fugitive centered on a series-long mystery involving the One Armed Man responsible for Dr. Richard Kimball’s status on the show. Lynch intended this as homage to a show he’d admired, and we’ll see that this is explicitly-meant when we learn the man’s name.

• I loved that when Ben Horne walks in on Audrey at the Great Northern she’s just standing there, grooving to the trippy bass lines of Badalamenti’s score, and that we see Horne go to the radio and shut the music off – again implying that the teenagers in Twin Peaks all listen to avant-garde freakout jazz for their kooky dance parties.

• This is some soapy stuff, yeah? Donna’s confession to her mother, and Ben Horne’s confrontation with Audrey, manage to have both the overwrought language of my grandmother’s ‘stories’ and their awkward sense of timing, acting-wise. It can sometimes be difficult to tell whether the awkwardness is calculated. Are Lynch, Frost and the cast commenting on soap operas at this point? Or are they unabashedly making one without irony? The answer is “both.”

That soapy lens we’re looking through to watch these characters already feels as if it’s disintegrating. The discovery of Laura’s body, while rife with overwrought moments from pretty much every cast member, was still shot through with an almost voyeuristic naturalism. Andy’s crying at the scene, and Laura’s parents’ total breakdowns, were uncomfortable in their immediacy as much as they were giggle-worthy in OTT intensity. Subsequent violence (the woman in her nightgown walking, shivering, down the tracks, and Shelly’s fetal pleading) only augmented that sense of peeking in on something terrible. It’s as though the show is attempting to push through the melodrama – pushing it to see how far it’ll stretch ‘til it breaks – in search of something rawer and more visceral. There’s nothing ‘classy’ about that acting. It doesn’t have the refined, painterly quality of Oscar-worthy weep-fests, and it doesn’t remain in the realm of over-the-top B-movie chest beating. It goes past that point, and ends up horrifically close to actual emotional agony.

• Major Briggs’ speech to Bobby is both pitiable in its emotional distance and warmly admirable in its openness. I love that Briggs is so understanding in his words, but that his professionalism gives them an airless, pokey/hokey quality. It underlines very well the gulf that opens between parents and their children as they both age, and it does so in a way that feels at once organic and off-center.

Cooper: “Can I ask her about her log?”
Truman: “Many have.”

• How are you feeling about the Log Lady? Is she too whacktastic for you? She’s so peripheral to these episodes, and so strikingly, specifically strange, that she remains on the good side of quirky for me as a viewer. The dreamlike quality of the show gets heightened again when she enters the scene and gives Cooper his first chance to speak with her log – this quality is one I’ll discuss at length at the end of the column.

• Leo, while younger than remembered, is also more brutal than remembered. When he slips the soap into the sock at the sink (hooray for alliteration!) it’s a moment that, nowadays, might be cut away from immediately. Not in Twin Peaks. We get to watch the wind up, the cowering of Shelly in the corner…..and that THWAP sound right after the screen goes black feels a lot like Lynch giving me the finger. It’s rightly sickening.

• Let’s discuss violence against women. So far, we have a murdered prom queen, a second, mentally and physically violated female victim, a classic domestic abuse case of a housewife, a threatened daughter….and we’re just finished with ep. 1. I’m familiar with Lynch’s fondness for putting women in horrible situations but this aspect of his M.O. feel extra-highlighted to me in this show. Is Lynch using femininity destroyed/degraded as a way of commenting on the corruption that seems to be a grand theme of the show? Is he engaging in a long, inglorious tradition of women-in-peril for more mundane reasons? Because it suits the story?

• We hear/see Laura twice in this episode: Once, as James is remembering how he got his half of the locket, and once at the end of the episode, where Hawaii Doc listens to creepily-private sounding tapes of Laura talking to him, and where its revealed that somehow, he’s got a half of the heart necklace (in a coconut, no less). Does this mean he was following and watching Donna and James in the Pilot episode? Dramatically speaking, Laura’s first appearance, which is visual as well as auditory, serves to shore up our impression of Laura as a slightly-off, sweet girl. There’s again a seriously soapish quality to the moment between her and James, but that quality is undercut by a strange flatness in her eyes. Her second appearance, in which we hear but do not see her, is more revealing – as if by stripping away her image, we’re getting closer to the truth of what she is/was. We hear that she loves James’ sweetness, but that he’s so very dull – and that she knows ‘she’ll get lost in those woods again tonight.” It’s a sad, eerie moment. Self-destructive people often seem to be aware of both their capacity for self-harm, and their inability to do anything about it. The woods on this show are as much figurative as they are literal.

• Jacoby’s office is awash with Hawaiiana – he seems as obsessed with the Tropics as Cooper is with damn fine coffee. This isn’t just some meaningless quirk as far as I’m concerned. For one, the character was reportedly inspired by Terrence McKenna, also a nut for Hawaii. For another, Keith Phipps astutely noted in his recaps for this show that Jacoby’s passion for the Islands is reflective of Cooper’s passion for Twin Peaks – both are “far off lands” exotic to those who’ve never visited. Both are Utopias of different sorts, when viewed as concepts and not as reality. Both offer the promise of a new life, a different life, where your cares and worries can be swept away by a slice of cherry pie or the sounds of the ocean.

ZEN OUT, AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!