Thoughts on The One-Armed Man:

• Moreso than Rest In Pain, The One-Armed Man feels like an episode without a ton of incident. It’s what some folks call a “moving the pieces around” episode. It’s solid, but it’s not that eventful and therefore not worth as much verbiage. Plus, it’s almost the holiday weekend. Much as I enjoy writing these, it’s hard not to be distracted by thoughts of eminent beach.

• Once again we return to the framed photo of Homecoming Queen Laura, reestablishing her image as we continue to explore the reality behind the lacquered smile. Here, though, we pan from her image directly to the image of Bob – the inexplicably-frightening dream figure that we’ve glimpsed three times now: Once in the pilot, barely there in the mirror, once in the first episode, as part of Sarah Palmer’s vision, and once in Cooper’s dream. When describing Bob to Truman, Mrs. Palmer says that he “looked like an animal” (again with the animalistic/savage imagery), and seems fixated on his face (“His face…My god, his face.”). We also learn that the glimpses we saw of a hand removing Laura’s locket from the woods (a hand that we now know belongs to the loopy Dr. Jacoby) were a part of Mrs. Palmer’s vision as well.

• It’s confirmed for us here that Deputy Andy and Lucy have some kind of intimate relationship, but it’s also implied that this relationship is strained right now. Cooper again identifies the connection between them, as he did with Truman and Josie. One of Cooper’s strongest talents is his ability to spot connections – between people, between events, between ideas – and this ability is basically the definition of intuition.

Cooper: “Were her problems of a sexual nature?”
Dr. Jacoby: “Agent Cooper, the problems of our entire society are of a sexual nature.”

• Jacoby’s glasses – one red lens, one blue lens – are a great touch. I love that they introduce him in the Sherriff’s station doing parlor magic tricks for an unimpressed Cooper. The interview that follows between them confirms that Laura was having serious problems, and further darkens our overall impression of her life prior to her death. Cooper and Jacoby’s banter emphasizes for us again the carnal primacy of much of this town’s sin. Sexuality underlies everything in this “idyllic” place, from One Eyed Jack’s to Jacoby’s previous tie-violation.

• Jacoby also makes explicit the connection between Tibet and “Ha-vai-yi,” two “paradises” that these men use as their respective True North. As creepy as Jacoby is, there’s a sense of genuine regret to his interactions with Cooper, first at the end of the last episode and then again here, where his admission of “abject failure” feels real.

Cooper: “Good morning, Gordon. How we doin’?”

• Gordon Cole, Cooper’s boss, gets his introduction in this episode over the phone lines. Cole is played by Lynch himself, and he’s one of my favorite supporting characters, shoring up the impression of the FBI as a group of off-kilter superheroes of a sort. Bob is further discussed, and we learn here that Cooper is a “strong sender,” self-diagnosed as able to influence people’s emotions/thoughts.

Great “Invitation to Love” line: “Let’s get one thing straight I didn’t spend the evening busting up the Amazons by dodging blow darts.”

Hawk: “Harry, he’s here at the motel. Room 101, last name is Gerard.”

• Mike, the one-armed shoe salesman, enters the plot. He seems to know nothing of what Cooper is talking about (though he could always be lying), but he’s undoubtedly the man from Coop’s dream, complete with a missing arm and a former tattoo. And isn’t it interesting that the tattoo said “BOB”? Given that the Bob it supposedly refers to is a harmless vet, and not the Bob of our collective nightmares, and given the way Mike relates Bob’s current, comatose state and his breakdown when saying his friends’ name, can we perhaps assume that they were lovers? Mike’s seemingly-legitimate confusion and his lack of apparent connection to the events surrounding Laura Palmer’s death add an extra layer of dreamlike confusion and unease to all of this.

• Lynch’s homage to The Fugitive becomes explicit here as we learn the salesman’s name: Philip Michael Gerard. Take the Michael out and you’re left with Philip Gerard – the name of the police Lieutenant who chased Dr. Richard Kimball throughout the run of The Fugitive.

Ben Horne: “I’m going to give little Elvis … a bath.”

• Uhhhhh….Did we just get confirmation of Ben Horne’s nickname for his junk? There’s something hilarious about there actually being a “Little Elvis” doll there, suggesting in the alternative that Ben Horne is actually going to sit in the tub and give a doll a bath. The Old Mill plot picks up some steam in this episode. One of the things I’m enjoying about the show: people, as a rule, talk to each other. When Josie suspects Piper Laurie of cooking the books and conspiring with Horne to kill her, she tells Truman. Another show might have her keep it all a secret for the sake of drawing out tension, but it feels more organic approached this way.

Great Audry Line: “I’ve been doing some research. In real life there is no algebra.”

• I like the detail of the way the walls in the school have been painted – they look like stylized electrocardiogram readings. It’s as though the school’s walls are measuring the heartbeat of the town. Which is neat. And also, probably, completely off base. There’s a nice chemistry between Audrey and Donna. They’re clearly not friends, and there’s a Brick-like noirishness to their partnership.

• One Eyed Jacks – a western with Marlon Brando? Apparently!

• The Veterinarian’s sign reads: “Aid to the beast incarnate.” …That’s a pretty sinister sign.

• With those ridiculous glasses off, Madeleine looks like a mirror reversal of her cousin (and should, since Sheryl Lee plays both roles) and again highlights for us the notions of duality and twinning that play such an important, interesting part in the show.

Donna: “Laura used to say that her mother was kinda of spooky. She used to see things. She’d have these dreams, Laura did too.”

• The episode ends with Donna and James back in the woods, discussing the supernatural aspects of this show with hushed sincerity. And as they talk about Mrs. Palmer’s visions we get a glimpse of an owl perched high above them, looking down on their secrets. We glimpse the both of them from the owls point of view, another instance of voyeurism that combines itself with literally animal/savage imagery. Remember that owls are traditionally associated with Saturn, that the Blackfoot tribe believed them to be the ghosts of dead medicine men, and consider this phrase – a forward-looking signpost for you on the journey going forward, much like the Little Man’s “clues”:

The owls are not what they seem.

Enjoy the holiday weekend, everyone! Thanks for reading. As always I invite you to bring up stuff I’ve missed in the comments section. Your thoughts are always read, and always appreciated.

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:

• “MC Chris” pays tribute to Twin Peaks

And here are just a few songs inspired by the show:

• Swallow the Sun, “Ghost of Laura Palmer”
• Moby, “Go,” featuring a sample of Laura Palmer’s Theme
• Camper Van Beethoven, “That Gum You Like Is Back In Style”

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)
• Lost & found: Twin Peaks (Eps. 1 & 2)

Rest in Pain & the One-Armed Man (S1, eps. 3 & 4)

“This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.” – D.H. Lawrence

After the suckerpunch-strangeness of Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer, the next two episodes of Twin Peaks can feel like something of a letdown. The show still offers us a virtual bazaar of the bizarre in terms of its characters and its scenes, but it’s lacking in that Next Level Weirdness that Lynch hauled front and center during the last episode’s final minutes. That’ll be a problem for this show going forward; while I appreciate the devotion to sketching out an entire town full of whackadoos, the fact of the matter is that the show is never as interesting or as compelling for me as when its stalking its own mythology. You can’t drop a shaking dwarf in our laps and expect us to sit patiently as you remove it again without explanation.

And yet, the confounding of our expectations is a large part of what makes Twin Peaks work as well as it does. The way in which the vibrantly-hallucinatory dreamscape we’ve witnessed fades off for a while, discussed but not so much returned-to, is entirely apt. In its place we return to the unfortunate reality of life in Twin Peaks, where the Palmer family is preparing to bury their only daughter, and where Agent Cooper continues to track Laura’s killer with his curious brand of off-center intensity. These two episodes invite us to contemplate the Evil that men do – the acts we’re capable of as people, without the convenience of supernatural deities to pin our sin to – and the tragic aftermath of those acts. On that level, a level on which we’re invited to contemplate the depths of madness a father will sink to following the murder of his only daughter, these episodes succeed admirably well.

Thoughts on Rest in Pain:

• I’ve just now noticed that Eric Dare, who plays Leo Johnson, spells his name as follows in the credits for the show: “Eric Da Re.” Weird. Also weird: the fact that Mr. Da Re was in Starship Troopers as a medic. One other random piece of casting trivia: Peggy Lipton, who plays Norma, was in the original Mod Squad.

Cooper: “You said you and Laura weren’t exactly friends.”
Audrey: “We weren’t friends but I understood her better then the rest.”

• That’s an interesting line. Thanks to a breakfast meet up between Cooper and Audrey, we learn that Laura also worked at the Horne Department Store perfume counter, just as Ronette Pulaski did, and just as the “new girl” at One Eyed Jack’s did. Ben Horne’s store appears to operate as a Farm Team for Blackie’s girls up at the log cabin bordello. I love the banter between them in this scene, and I love the sense of Femme Fatale and Naïveté that Audrey exudes in all of her scenes.

Cooper: “Harry my dream is a code waiting to be broken. Break the code, solve the crime.”

• Cooper’s on the right track. His dream IS a code – a wonky, goofily-obtuse code. And before this episode ends one of the dream’s “clues” (they’re so obtuse that they aren’t really clues at all – more like signposts along Cooper’s journey) will be confirmed. I love the way that Cooper rattles off the details of his dream, nonchalant as if he’d been ordering some syrup to collide with his ham. I’ve been talking about the dreamlike quality of this town, and in the last column I compared the illogical similarities between dreams and magic. The line between the two continues to blur in this episode, as Cooper’s dream acts as a form of magic – forecasting future knowledge in a way that connects nicely with what we can assume to be Deputy Hawk’s belief system (more on this below).

• The fact that Cooper couldn’t remember the name that Laura had whispered to him ticked some people off, back in the day. One of the reasons cited for Twin Peaks’ “Fallow Period” (a stretch of Season 2 of more-dubious quality than what came before) is that pressure from audience and Network forced Frost and Lynch’s hand in revealing the identity of Laura’s killer too quickly (they’d planned on it going unsolved indefinitely). I had, and have, no problem with that idea. Lost strung me along for six seasons without any real complaint from me, despite pulling pretty much the same sort of ham-handed “I have sudden convenient amnesia” stunts. And yet, the way that Twin Peaks ended up playing out still feels “right” to me when I watch it (granted, I’m not taking into account what happens after the reveal, and the sentiment that the show’s fallow period began after the killer was revealed). The show as a whole becomes darker, stronger, and more memorable because of the decision to reveal Laura’s killer, and I’m very much looking forward to writing about it.

Great Albert Line: “I’ve got a lot of cutting and pasting to do gentlemen so please, why don’t you return to your porch rockers and resume whittling.”

• In point of fact, Albert gets a lot of great lines. This entire scene is basically an excuse for him to fire off some verbal pyrotechnics, until it takes a sharp, sudden turn into another emotional place altogether. The scene in the morgue is part slapstick, part tragedy, and it again achieves the tricky balancing act of being both things without losing either the comedy of watching men fight over a dead body or the tragedy of watching men fight over a dead body. Cooper’s quiet moment with Laura is genuinely touching. He attends to what remains of her dignity with the smallest of gestures, and brings the loopy proceedings to a clear halt with his abrupt, compassionate dressing-down of Albert. His tender handling of Laura’s exposed arm reminds us that he is the calm and steady moral center of this show, predilection for young girls notwithstanding.

Cooper Line That Makes Me Smile: “Look at that! Ducks! On the lake!”

• Enter Madeleine Ferguson, Laura Palmer’s cousin and virtual twin – the bookworm to Laura’s prom queen. She looks like some SNL caricature of a “nerdy girl,” with her enormous red glasses askew on her face and her tangled-looking dark hair. The detail of her weirdly-crooked glasses is the sort of touch on this show that helps give the entirety of it an off-kilter feel. Maddy’s introduction on the show further highlights Lynch’s ongoing preoccupation with doubles and twinning. Maddy’s appearance also begins this show’s slow homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film containing a lead female named….Madeleine (played by Stunning Blonde, Kim Novak). As the show continues to roll on I’ll talk more about how the show pays homage to Hitchcock’s classic film. Those of you who’ve watched Fire Walk With Me (I have not, but will after we watch the show) will be interested to learn that Novak’s….”twin” in Vertigo is named Judy.

• A drugged-up Leland Palmer is watching Invitation to Love when Madeleine enters to give her condolences on Laura’s death. The ways in which what’s happening on the show-within-the-show mirror what’s simultaneously happening in the show itself are really interesting, and worth noting. Notice that “Selina Swift” plays the roles of both “Emerald” and “Jade,” two women that sound as though they should be twins/related. And notice that Sheryl Lee returns in this episode to play Madeleine Ferguson, on top of playing the very-dead Laura Palmer, just after Invitation to Love introduces the notion of twins to this episode. Maddy’s introduction is also intercut with Jade’s surprise visit to Jared on Leland’s soap, giving the whole thing a feeling of unreality. Sidenote: I love that Invitation to Love features a character named “Montana.”

• Norma’s incarcerated husband’s up for parole – that can’t be good for her or Ed. To be honest, Hank’s introduction into the story feels like one plot point too many right now. There’s enough going on without adding yet-another complication in the form of a homicidal husband to come between Norma and Ed. And speaking of Ed – the actor playing him conveys a world of frustrated isolation in the arms of his mad-pirate wife, Nadine. Her creepy collection of porcelain figurines adds another layer of WTF to this character, and I can’t help but feel as trapped as Ed obviously feels, watching Nadine curl around him with suffocating intensity. We’ll learn how this odd-couple ended up together further down the line, but the circumstances don’t matter nearly as much as the crushing apathy written all over Ed’s face.

Leo: “I knew who she was alright, everybody did.”

• Cooper and Truman’s visit to Leo continues to underline his probable involvement in Laura’s death. We already know that he’s the source of the cocaine Laura used. And thanks to Cooper’s smooth, knowing line of questioning, we also know that he’s got a less-than-solid record. To say the least. What’s interesting about this scene to me on a thematic level involves Leo’s line above. “Everybody” knew who Laura was, according to Leo, and yet after her death Truman and Cooper are discovering a whole new side to Laura Palmer, and implying that most of the people in this town didn’t really know her at all – or knew, and hid what they knew.

Surprisingly Profound Major Briggs Line: “In ceremony begins understanding, the will to carry on without those we must leave behind.”
Great, Typically-Bonkers Bobby Line: “I’m not afraid of any damn funeral. Afraid? I can hardly wait! AFRAID?! I’m going to turn it UP! SIDE! DOWN!”

Albert: “News flash, the little lady had a habit.”

• Albert may be an enormous pain in the ass, but he’s ridiculously good at his job, just like Cooper. One of the aspects I find curiously compelling about this show is in its depiction of the FBI, which seems to be one-half Nuthouse and one-half Justice League. That impression will be deepened when we meet Gordon Cole. It’s in this scene that we get the first connection between real life and Cooper’s ‘dream code’ with the revelation that Laura had been bound with her arms drawn back (“sometimes, my arms bend back”), and we get the sense that, however dreamlike the mythology of the show is, there’s also a sense of purpose to it. Albert’s report also highlights again for us the animalistic/savage imagery of the show as Albert identifies the bites on Laura’s body as those of an animal. We’ll learn that these are bird bites – a detail that becomes more disturbing, the deeper we head into these woods.

Cooper: “Albert, I hope you can hear me. I’ve only been in Twin Peaks a short time but in that time I have seen decency, honor and dignity. Murder is not a faceless event here. It is not a statistic to be tallied up at the end of the day. Laura Palmer’s death has affected each and every man, woman and child because life has meaning here – every life. That a way of living I thought had vanished from the Earth but it hasn’t, Albert; its right here in Twin Peaks.”

• Given what we’ve learned about the dark nooks and crannies of this town, it’s very possible to hear/read Cooper’s words here as ironic. If that’s not intentional, it’s certainly a happy accident. Yet, what draws me to Twin Peaks as a show isn’t the depravity of its villains or the intoxication that comes along with its depictions of Evil (though these things are major factors, a truth that makes me feel a little ugly inside). What draws me to Twin Peaks is the genuine optimism of Cooper’s delivery. When we see through Cooper’s eyes we see something of what he’s talking about. We also understand something deeper about Agent Cooper, and something that will become clearer as the show rolls on – Cooper needs to believe in Twin Peaks essential decency. He needs, very badly, to find a place that reflects the things he values and holds dear. He needs this, because those values have been shaken, because his life prior to Twin Peaks shows us (however indirectly) just WHY Cooper thinks that way of living had vanished from the earth. In the last column I described Dale Cooper as a kind of knight, and that comparison is going to keep coming up. Here, Cooper’s crackpot optimism is a shield of sorts – a shield that helps to keep life’s darkness at bay. We’re going to delve into Cooper’s past as the show does, and I’ll be giving you a little extra “homework” after Season 1 adds that will, I think, add significant value to the show for you as a viewer. Commence your excitement.

• The voyeurism of the show gets another shot in the arm as we watch Audrey skulking her way through secret passages to spy on her own family. Her peeping tom act is just one of many instances of voyeurism in Lynch’s filmography – the most famous of which is probably Jeffrey Beaumont’s sneaky-peeking in Blue Velvet. In moments like this it can feel as though, to some extent, Lynch is both encouraging us to indulge our own voyeurism (we are, after all, sneaking our own peeks into the very private lives of, granted, fictional people) and calling our attention to that voyeurism. Unlike, say, the murderous “protagonists” of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, who gracelessly shove the audience’s collective face in grue, Lynch seems less interested in indicting the audience than in making us participants. He’s less interested in lecturing than he is in immersion. If there’s judgment in how Lynch portrays his voyeuristic moments it’s a judgment that we make upon ourselves, not one that’s simplistically leveled at us (can you tell that I don’t particularly like Funny Games?).

Bobby: “You make me sick. You damn hypocrites make me SICK! Everybody knew she was in trouble but we didn’t do anything. All you good people…You wanna know who killed Laura? You did! We all did, and pretty words aren’t going to bring her back, man, so save your prayers. She would’ve laughed at them anyway.”

• Laura’s funeral, which I remember being solely weird and funny, is also deeply sad to me now. I’d mentioned in the last column that the true killer of Laura Palmer is the town of Twin Peaks in its entirety. Bobby’s hypocrisy melts away here as he indicts himself alongside those stationed at Laura’s grave. Bobby’s freak out moment here is both uncharacteristically poignant and righteous. By calling out the town and implicating them all in Laura’s death – even himself – he pulls to the surface the underlying feeling that’s been permeating the episodes so far: this town is sick, and getting sicker. In the past I’ve entertained the notion that Bob, or the force Bob represents, has been ‘sickening’ the town for some time, and that’s why the people behave as strangely and as terribly as they do – or that the town is ‘sick’ already as a result of its own misdeeds, allowing Bob to freely roam amongst its inhabitants and increase the weirdness exponentially. That’s all pure malarkey in all likelihood, but its malarkey that I like.

SARAH: “Don’t ruin this too.”

• Leland’s coffin jump remains firmly balanced between black comedy and real pathos – it’s in the same willfully-weird vein as Bobby’s car hood surfing routine. It goes on too long, veers from comedy to tragedy and back to comedy again, and Sarah’s line to her husband is potent and tragic on a number of levels. Can you imagine having to watch your husband go slowly insane following the death of your child? We’ll talk a lot more about this as the show goes on.

Sherriff Truman: “There’s a sort of evil out there; something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want: a darkness…a presence. It takes many forms, but it’s been out there for as long as anyone can remember, and we’ve always been here to fight it.”

• It’s here that we meet the Bookhouse Boys, a ‘secret society’ which cements the series’ backwoods supernaturalism by evoking a long, seemingly timeless tradition of standing against an acknowledged darkness – an opposite to the ‘good things’ Twin Peaks offers Cooper and the town’s residents. You can interpret this darkness literally, and accept the supernatural aspects that are creeping into the show, or you can view it figuratively. Both interpretations are valid, though the metaphysical is clearly real on this show. I immediately want to know more about the Boys. How were they formed, and why? Why is James involved with them, and yet keeping mum about Laura with another member (Truman)? I also want to hang out in The Bookhouse. That place looks like a blast. The existence of the Boys draws some of these characters in an interesting new light. Truman is a square-jawed, trustworthy man of the law, but he’s unafraid to step outside the bounds of the law to protect his town. He’s willing to draft “civilians” in secret, and his fellow officers are willing to keep that secret.

• Someone want to explain the Après Ski sweater that Leo’s wearing during the latter half of this episode?

Dr. Jacoby: “I’m a terrible person Agent Cooper. I pretend that I’m not, but I am. Oh, I sit and listen to their problems, day after day. These people…think of me as their friend. Truth is, I really don’t care. I thought nothing, no one could ever reach me again. Laura changed all that.”

• There’s something genuinely sad about Dr. Jacoby’s speech to Cooper. Jacoby’s willingness to recognize his own wickedness has the odd but somehow natural effect of reducing our suspicion of him. If there’s a theme to this installment it’s the theme of regret – Jacoby regrets his detachment and his inability to “save” Laura. Bobby regrets his role in Laura’s death, and the overall hypocrisy of the town that enabled her demise, Briggs’ regrets the communication gap between he and his son….

Cooper: “Do you believe in the soul?”
Hawk: “Several.”
Cooper: “More then one?”
Hawk: “Blackfoot legend. Waking souls that give life to the mind and the body. A dream soul that wanders.”
Cooper: “Dream souls…Where do they wander?”
Hawk: “Faraway places. The land of the dead.”
Cooper: “Is that where Laura is?”
Hawk: “Laura’s in the ground, Agent Cooper. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

• There’s a lot going on in this brief exchange – the Blackfoot legend here may or may not be authentic (anyone reading this a member of the Blackfoot tribe? Or knowledgeable about their beliefs?), but it is very pertinent to the show, at least as far as I’m concerned. There’s a lot here that’s already important to the storyline, and some stuff that will become more important/more apparent as we move on through the show.

For one, here we again have the idea of twins invoked – duality that extends, not just to the names of certain townspeople/the town itself, or to the literal duality embodied by Cousin Maddie, but to the soul itself. To hear Hawk tell it, every soul has a doppelganger, a twin, embodying for us the waking self and the dreaming self.

For another, this dreaming self travels, both literally and figuratively. Remember that Cooper traveled to the Red Room in his dream, and that Cooper’s intuition is a powerful force on this show. That intuition is as much about problem-solving as it is about spirituality. I may not know anything about the concept of the soul in Blackfoot belief, but I do know that the “medicine bundle” is a centrally-important concept in their belief system. A vision would be given to a member of the tribe by a spirit (think Cooper’s Red Room) that would instruct him to collect certain items/objects (think of the “clues” given by the Little Man) that would give him sacred power. In addition to this tidbit o’ trivia, I also know that dreams are important in the Blackfoot faith. It’s believed that dreams are sent by the Sun in order to help people look forward to the future and perceive what is yet to come (and remember that Cooper was a much older man in his dream).

Lastly, the Blackfoot people believe that the wicked become ghosts, or “Sta-au” (forgive any mangling of the word) who, in unhappiness, “prowl about the lodges of the living, seeking to do them injury.” These spirits have no power in the lodges, where the fire burns. But outside, in the wild (in the woods), they cause sickness and death and lunacy. In Blackfoot belief, owls are believed to be the ghosts of dead medicine men.

All stuff to keep in the back of your melon, alongside your cheat codes and film dialogue and useless trivia (Bats always fly to the left out of a cave!).

Leland: “Will you dance with me? Please?”

• This scene breaks my heart. We’re watching as Leland spirals into a grief that seems to be acting as a gateway to madness, and the way that this moment stays in one emotional realm, the fact that it doesn’t veer into a prolonged bit, or back and forth between comedy and tragedy, makes it that much more powerful to me. I don’t have children yet, but I’m getting to the point where I’ll have responsibility for another human life sooner, rather than later, and I find myself deeply empathizing with Leland’s pain here. I cannot imagine how I’d handle the brutal killing of my only child.

CHASE THE ONE-ARMED MAN, AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!